Zahra's Paradise

In a Castilian village in 1940, just after the Spanish Civil War, a travelling cinema shows Frankenstein, and six-year-old Ana asks her sister why the monster killed the little girl. Then she goes looking for him in the fields. A slow, quiet film about a child's imagination in a house where nobody talks, made under Franco's censorship.

Why it’s here: It's a film about a kid trying to make sense of something the adults won't say. What's punk is that it was made under dictatorship and smuggles its grief past the censors. What's pedagogical is Ana: how children take fear and make a story to hold it. Pairs with Pan's Labyrinth (suggested 10-25), The Book Thief and Pedro Paramo. Note: slow, near silent, with a scene of a hunted man and an animal death; not a kids film despite the child protagonist. Spanish with subtitles.

Associated Press journalists Mstyslav Chernov, Evgeniy Maloletka and Vasilisa Stepanenko were the last international reporters in Mariupol when Russia besieged the city in 2022. Their footage of a maternity hospital bombing, mass graves and doctors working by flashlight is edited into a day-by-day record of the siege. The film won the 2024 Oscar for best documentary.

Why it’s here: The film is what witness looks like when somebody refuses to look away. What's punk is that the reporters kept filming while Russian propaganda called their footage staged. What's pedagogical is how clearly it shows the work of journalism, and the cost. Pairs with Winter on Fire, This Is Not Propaganda and the Fascism bundle. Note: graphic scenes including dead children; for older teens and adults.