Human Acts

A mechanic in Iran becomes convinced that a man he's crossed paths with is the blindfolded interrogator who once tortured him in prison — and enlists other former detainees to help him confirm it, with escalating and morally uncertain consequences.

Why it’s here: Punk in the literal sense that its own existence defies a state filmmaking ban — Panahi shot this clandestinely after his own imprisonment, and it's his most direct attack yet on Iran's security apparatus. Pedagogical in refusing easy catharsis: revenge here is morally murky, and the film makes you sit with that uncertainty rather than cheering a clean reckoning.

While grappling with personal loss, Pulitzer-winning writer Isabel Wilkerson traces a hidden architecture connecting racial hierarchy in America, the caste system in India, and the machinery of Nazi Germany. Adapted from Wilkerson's book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents.

Why it’s here: Punk in daring to name America's racial order as a caste system, kin to India's and Nazi Germany's, rather than a uniquely American aberration. Pedagogical in dramatizing how a writer's own grief becomes the engine of rigorous, world-spanning research.