Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

Six-year-old Moonee spends her summer in a purple motel outside Disney World, where her mother and a lot of other families live because they can't afford anything else. The kids run wild, the manager, played by Willem Dafoe, keeps an eye out, and the adults are always one bad week from the street. It's shot from a child's height, in bright colors.

Why it’s here: The film shows hidden homelessness through a kid's eyes, in the shadow of a theme park. What's punk is that it doesn't ask for pity and it doesn't clean up the mother. What's pedagogical is how clearly it shows what poverty looks like when it's called a motel. Pairs with Evicted and Poverty, by America.

Jong-su, a young delivery worker and aspiring writer, runs into Hae-mi, a neighbor from his childhood. She goes on a trip and comes back with Ben, a rich and charming man who tells Jong-su his hobby is burning down greenhouses. Then Hae-mi vanishes. Lee Chang-dong adapts a Murakami story into a slow thriller about class, envy and what you can prove.

Why it’s here: The film turns class rage into a mystery that never resolves, which is how class often works. What's punk is that the poor man is the one telling the story and nobody believes him. What's pedagogical is how much the film shows without saying. It's 2.5 hours, slow, and ambiguous on purpose. Close relative: Parasite, which is in the suggestion log.