Shadowshaper

Jess is a British Punjabi eighteen-year-old in West London who plays soccer better than anyone in her park, and her parents want her to learn to cook a full Indian dinner. She joins a women's team behind their backs, falls for her coach, and has to find a way to be both daughters at once. It's a comedy with a wedding, an ugly sports bra and a lot of heart.

Why it’s here: The film makes a joke out of the fight between family expectations and a girl's ambition, and the girl wins on her own terms. What's punk is that Jess isn't asked to choose between her people and her game. What's pedagogical is how it handles racism, sexism and homophobia in a form a family can watch together. Pairs with Persepolis and Funny Boy.

In the early 1970s, a ramshackle summer camp for teenagers with disabilities near Woodstock, Camp Jened, ran on hippie rules: no adults in charge of the kids' lives. The campers, among them co-director James LeBrecht and the future activist Judy Heumann, went on to organize the sit-ins and protests that helped win the Americans with Disabilities Act. It was produced for Netflix and was nominated for the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature.

Why it’s here: The film shows that a movement can begin as a summer. What's punk is that the people it follows organize without asking permission, and refuse to be treated as objects of pity. What's pedagogical is the through-line from a place where kids ran their own lives to a federal law that changed what was possible. It's a rare entry on disability and civil rights, and a natural fit for DoCR's self-organization principle.