The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together

Based on a real 1990s case in Tamil Nadu: a man from the Irular tribal community is arrested by police on a false theft charge and disappears in custody. His wife, Sengani, goes looking for him, and a lawyer takes the case. A courtroom drama about caste, police violence and what it takes to make an institution answer.

Why it’s here: The film puts caste on screen as a legal system and not a metaphor. What's punk is how it centers a woman nobody would listen to and refuses to let the court be the hero. What's pedagogical is the case file: it shows how a lawyer builds evidence against a state. Pairs with Annihilation of Caste, Ants Among Elephants and Caste. Note: Tamil with subtitles, about 2h45m, and it shows police torture. The release drew a defamation complaint over a calendar image in one scene, and the filmmakers changed it.

MIT researcher Joy Buolamwini discovers that a face-recognition system can't see her face unless she puts on a white mask. She follows the thread to police departments, landlords and schools that are using such systems, and to the activists in London and New York who are pushing back. It's a documentary about who gets watched and who gets judged by software.

Why it’s here: The film shows how algorithms inherit the prejudice of the people who built them, and who gets hurt first. What's punk is that a graduate student's anomaly turns into a campaign against the tech industry. What's pedagogical is how clearly it explains training data and error rates to a general audience. Pairs with Deep Unlearning, Automating Inequality and Your Face Belongs to Us.