Gerontocracy in America: How the Old Are Hoarding Power and Wealth—and What to Do About It

Ricky, a Newcastle man who needs work, buys a van to become a 'self-employed' franchise delivery driver. His wife Abby, a home-care worker, sells her car to help pay for it. The film follows a family as the gig model eats their time, then their kids' lives. Written by Paul Laverty.

Why it’s here: The film shows how a contract that calls you your own boss moves all the risk onto you. What's punk is that it refuses a villain you can punch: the system does the work. What's pedagogical is the mechanics: fines, unpaid hours, who owns the van. Pairs with Nickel and Dimed and Bullshit Jobs. A hard watch for parents.

A Brazilian filmmaker narrates the unraveling of her country's democracy from the inside. Petra Costa follows the rise of Lula and the Workers' Party, the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff, Lula's imprisonment and the election of Jair Bolsonaro, with rare access to the people at the center, and weaves in her own family's ties to Brazil's elite and to the resistance against the dictatorship.

Why it’s here: The punk move is the point of view: Costa doesn't pretend to stand outside the story. She narrates in the first person, as a daughter of dissidents and of a family that built its wealth in the system she is questioning, and says plainly that she is grieving. The pedagogy is in how it shows democracy failing slowly instead of in one coup: courts, media, markets and elites each making a reasonable-sounding move until the ground has shifted. That makes it a useful film for anyone trying to recognize the pattern in their own country. It takes a side, and critics have pointed out it is generous to the Workers' Party and thin on the economics and on that party's own corruption, so watch it as one informed witness's account rather than the neutral record.