Kolyma Tales

In Chile's Atacama Desert astronomers use the clearest skies on Earth to study the origins of the universe. In the same sand, women are still searching for the bones of relatives disposed of by Pinochet's dictatorship. Guzmán puts them in the same frame: people looking up at stars thirteen billion years old, and people on their knees looking for forty-year-old remains.

Why it’s here: The film makes the case that a country's past has to be dug up before it can be put to rest. What's punk is the women with their small shovels, who outlast the state's silence. What's pedagogical is the way it joins deep time and recent history and invites students to ask who gets to be an archaeologist of their own country. Sits beside Chile-adjacent books like The House of the Spirits. Note: availability data is about eleven weeks old, so re-check.

Spain, 1944. Ofelia moves with her pregnant mother to a military outpost run by her stepfather, Captain Vidal, a Francoist officer hunting the last rebels in the hills. She finds a labyrinth and a faun who gives her three tasks to prove she's a lost princess. Del Toro cuts between her fairy tale and the real cruelty around her, and the real one is worse.

Why it’s here: The film sets a child's imagination against fascism and shows imagination winning something that matters. What's punk is Ofelia's disobedience, which is the whole plot. What's pedagogical is how clearly it shows the cruelty of an obedient man. It's violent and not for young kids despite the fairy-tale look. Pairs with The Tin Drum and the fascism bundle.