Ferdydurke

A string of deadpan vignettes from Nazareth and an Israeli checkpoint on the edge of Jerusalem, held together by a silent observer (played by Suleiman himself) and a love story that can only happen in a parked car. The film replaces plot with absurd tableaux, from petty neighbor feuds to a ninja-style fantasy of resistance. It won the Jury Prize at Cannes.

Why it’s here: Suleiman does what a lot of political films can't: makes you laugh at occupation without ever letting you forget it. What's punk is that the satire punches up, at a checkpoint regime that turns everyday movement into a daily humiliation, without turning Palestinians into saints or statistics. What's pedagogical is that the humor teaches you how the system works from the inside, and the Academy ruling it ineligible for the Foreign Language Oscar because Palestine wasn't a recognized country tells you plenty on its own.

A documentary on the September 1971 uprising at Attica Correctional Facility in New York, when about 1,300 incarcerated men took over the prison to demand basic rights, and the state's assault that ended it killed 39 men, prisoners and hostages alike. Built from archival footage and testimony from survivors. It was nominated for the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature.

Why it’s here: The film puts the people who lived it back in charge of the story, and the story is how a state answers a list of demands. What's punk is the demands themselves: showers, food, medical care, the right to be treated as human. What's pedagogical is the aftermath, the gap between what officials said happened and what survivors and records show. It's a lesson in how to read an official account.