Teacher

Watanabe is a Tokyo city-hall bureaucrat who has stamped papers for thirty years. When he learns he is dying, he spends his savings on a night out, finds it empty, and then returns to his office to push through a request from mothers who want a children's playground built on a swamp. The film is in two halves, the second set at his wake.

Why it’s here: The film is about the paperwork that stops anything from being built, and the one man who decides to defeat it. What's punk is the war on bureaucracy, and the wake scene where his colleagues take credit. What's pedagogical is a lesson in how a small act inside a system gets shaped by the people who tell the story after. Kurosawa's memoir is in the catalog as Something Like an Autobiography.

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.