Movies to Watch With Social Issue Dramas

Souleymane’s Story

Dir. Boris Lojkine

What is Souleymane’s Story? Right off the bat, that’s what everyone asks from Souleymane. It’s what his fellow immigrant asks,…

Dupahiya

Dir. Sonam Nair

A town with no crime is a dream everywhere. It means safety, security, and trust for the residents within, so…

Like Water for Chocolate

With the gorgeous period costumes, the romance, and the familial dynamics, you would think that Like Water for Chocolate’s latest…

One Hundred Years of Solitude

It’s a tall order to depict One Hundred Years of Solitude. Considered to be one of the world’s most important…

It Was Just an Accident

Dir. Jafar Panahi

You can probably predict from the title that an accident starts this thriller but what happens after is totally unexpected.…

Nickel Boys

Dir. RaMell Ross

The first things that grab your attention in Nickel Boys are its beauty and technicality. Director RaMell Ross, a large-format…

Goodbye Julia

Dir. Mohamed Kordofani

Amidst the chaos that occurred when South Sudan split from the nation, a man is shot dead. To make up…

Pyramid Game

Dir. Park So-yeon

High school can be an incredibly cruel place, but it’s not as systematically cruel as the Baekyeon Girls’ High School…

The Believers

Dir. Wattanapong Wongwan

When people donate to temples, they rarely contemplate the way these donations are used for its upkeep and renovation, and…

Criminal Record

With the various police procedurals available online, it can feel like an oversaturated genre, at best. At worst, with the…

Fancy Dance

Dir. Erica Tremblay

Before she captivated the film world with her performance in Scorcese’s crime drama Killers of the Flower Moon, Lily Gladstone…

Mutt

Dir. Vuk Lungulov-Klotz

Just based off its title, Mutt is already a film that tackles a state of in-between, and perhaps what makes…

Interior Chinatown

When adapting a novel, television showrunners have to transform the text into video, so sometimes, things get cut, lines get…

The Bequeathed

Dir. Min Hong-nam

Succession, whether that be of family assets or of job titles, is always a tricky situation to navigate– often, those…

Stonewalling

Dir. Huang Ji & Ryuji Otsuka

At two hours and nearly 30 minutes, Stonewalling is quite long. The third film from spouses Ryuji Otsuka and Huang…

We Grown Now

Dir. Minhal Baig

Places evoke certain emotions, but even the most rundown, cramped projects feel special when they’re home. We Grown Now is…

Terrestrial Verses

Dir. Ali Asgari & Alireza Khatami

Since we live in a society, interacting with authority is inescapable. Terrestrial Verses depict fairly mundane day-to-day interactions– getting a…

Expats

With immigration being a vastly different experience across race, gender, and origin country, it can be easy to dismiss Amazon…

Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World

Dir. Radu Jude

With a title like this, it was expected that Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World…

Black Cake

We don’t really know our parents the same way they know about us. Black Cake recognizes this, and takes that…

Doi Boy

Dir. Nontawat Numbenchapol

After years of documentaries covering Thailand’s controversial issues, some of which have been temporarily banned by the Ministry of Culture,…

Blanquita

Dir. Fernando Guzzoni

Inspired by the Spiniak case, Blanquita reimagines the infamous scandal through mirrored interrogations and disorienting viewpoints. Blanquita rewrites the original…

Bheed

Dir. Anubhav Sinha

COVID-19 raised concerns about sanitation and cleanliness, but in a society that just banned discrimination against “impure” castes seventy years…

How to Blow Up a Pipeline

Dir. Daniel Goldhaber

On the one hand, How to Blow Up a Pipeline is a tense thriller—an excellently set-up heist that makes you…

Nothing to See Here

When a comedy is centered around people with disabilities, there’s a worry that the humor would be unfunny or demeaning…

Simón

Dir. Diego Vicentini & Diego Vincentini

While we would like to think that we would do all we can to fight against a tyrannical regime, it’s…

Kaala Paani

Dir. Amit Golani & Sameer Saxena

There’s a lot happening in Netflix’s first Hindi survival thriller series Kaala Paani. The main plot follows the discovery of…

The Secret Agent

Dir. Kleber Mendonça Filho

From 1964-1985, Brazil was under a military dictatorship. If you’re looking for films about this period of time, you can…

Bad Press

Dir. Joe Peeler & Rebecca Landsberry-Baker

We all learned that it’s good to have a free press, but most of us rarely consider why it’s good,…

Revenant

Dir. Lee Jeong-lim

Mysterious and hair-raising, Revenant is a supernatural drama whose demonic possession deals with modern-day detectives and Korean folklore. This strange…

Mambar Pierrette

Dir. Rosine Mbakam

If given the outline of this film, it might be easy to just call it poverty porn. But there’s a…

Tell Me That You Love Me

Dir. Kim Yoon-jin

Romantic relationships can come and go, but sometimes, one partner comes along and irrevocably changes your life forever. Tell Me…

Abang Adik

Dir. Jin Ong

At the fringes of society, sometimes, all you have is your family. You would do all you can to feed,…

About Dry Grasses

Dir. Nuri Bilge Ceylan

Given the controversial subject matter, there’s something remarkably placid about the way About Dry Grasses proceeds. Amidst the snowy white…