The Best Discussion-sparking Movies to Watch on Sundancenow
It’s no coincidence that many of the highest-acclaimed movies are also controversial. Serving beyond entertainment, these stories provoke essential social dialogues. As a case in point, here are the best discussion-sparking movies and shows available to stream now.
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In the dark comedy This Is Going to Hurt, Ben Whishaw stars as junior doctor Adam, who’s barely keeping it together in the understaffed and under-equipped ob-gyn ward of Britain’s NHS hospital. We see, often in sad and graphic detail, what goes on in a public hospital and the heavy toll this takes on both […]
Black Snow has the sleek style of a modern murder mystery, but its concern with Australia’s colonial past that sets this show apart. As a neo-noir series centered on a murder, the show has all the classic elements: the hardboiled detective, the suspicious townsfolk, and the murder. As the murder is set in 1994, nostalgic […]
Every episode of Totally Completely Fine begins with a trigger warning, and rightly so—the show’s entire premise is about mental health, grief, and self-harm. Vivian, the lead (a captivating Thomasin McKenzie), is an orphan who goes on benders and ideates about killing herself. Things escalate when she inherits a cliffside house that doubles as a […]
Set in a small town in Romania, R.M.N. is a challenging slow-burn that explores what happens to an insular community upon the arrival of immigrants from South Asia. Initially, the discrimination thrown at them seems tame; at the very least, it’s how you’d expect a homogenous and tight-knit group to react to outsiders. But more […]
Koreeda is a master of the tender gaze. He deals so softly, elegantly, and emphatically with the characters in his films, it will make you feel like you’re watching life itself in all its complex, emotional splendor. Maybe this is particularly true for this movie because it has been inspired by Koreeda’s memories of his […]
While many Palestinians had to leave their homeland, there are some families that stayed within the region. One such family is that of Palestinian director Elia Suleiman. The Time That Remains is a semi-biographical film that depicts each generation of the family in excellently framed, colorful shots, but while each scene is a beauty to […]