The Best Discussion-sparking Movies to Watch on Kanopy (Page 3)

Shrooms director Paddy Breathnach has als dipped his toes in romcoms and thrillers, but this queer Bogota-set drama has a lot of tenderness in its heart. Micro-budget and full of life as the name suggests, Viva is an inspiring story that centers around Jesus (Héctor Medina) and his own individuation. A hairdresser with the talent […]

This teenage crime drama contains enough grit to stand on its own, but The Tribe’s real hook is in the way it’s told: entirely in Ukrainian sign language, without subtitles. Set in a boarding school for deaf students, new arrival Sergei must contend with an institution that’s run like a gang. His journey through the […]

When depicting war and faith, it seems like men are the only ones that have to undertake these challenges, at least it seems, in the stories made available about these topics. But that simply isn’t true. The Innocents is one of the few reminders that, while women might have been kept from the front lines, […]

Given current events, there’s no denying that the discussion around abortion rights can be a bit tense. That being said, this tension isn’t new. It’s been in debate for decades, which is why there aren’t many films that handle the topic. As such, Citizen Ruth is a rare film. It’s a rare film that possibly […]

Even a director of William Friedkin’s caliber had his work cut out for him with this remake of the towering 1957 drama tracking a jury’s fraught deliberations in an apparently open-and-shut murder trial. Wisely, he changes little: most of the incisive dialogue remains the same, and the film still only takes place in one sweltering […]

A classic text of English literature classes is handsomely brought to life in this screen translation of the still-radical play An Inspector Calls. The Birlings, a wealthy industrialist family thriving in 1912 England, have a cozy family celebration shattered by the arrival of a police inspector investigating the suicide of a young working-class woman. But […]

One’s home country should be the place where a citizen has their rights, but that’s not the case in Charlie’s Country. At times, the film seems like a simple, straightforward depiction of an Aboriginal man living in a Westernized society, but David Gulpilil, who stars and who co-wrote the script, subtly infuses his community’s rage […]

Before Birdman and 1917 popularized the technique, this experimental film was shot entirely in one take, requiring four attempts before the final shot was taken. Unlike the aforementioned movies, however, we wouldn’t say that its events are in real time. As if sailing through the Winter Palace across centuries, the narrator, whose POV is the […]

When the country rises in rebellion against your dictatorial rule, we imagine that could be quite difficult. After a series of failures and atrocities committed to keep power, no one in the world would empathize with the dictator in question. Doing exactly this, however, made for a striking movie in The President. Never naming an […]

This slow-burning drama is set in an Indigenous reservation in South Dakota, where Johnny is a teenager who dreams of moving to L.A. with his girlfriend. He would have to leave behind his little sister, who is just grappling with the recent loss of their father.  Director Chloé Zhao (The Rider, Nomadland) worked with amateur […]

With a particularly empowering tenderness and resilience, The Divine Order explores a glossed-over chapter in history wherein Swiss women could not vote until 1971. The hillside Swiss farming village in which Nora Ruckstuhl lives seems picture-perfect. But under the village’s close-knit and idyllic surface, change is stirring. When an emerging sense of autonomy pushes Nora […]

You know that the people you choose to follow for a documentary are great characters when the film itself can survive as straightforward coverage of their actions, no fancy directorial flourishes needed. But this is not to downplay what director Meg Switzgable does. In fact, her dedication to sticking by Frank Kaler and the other […]

Robert lies dying in hospital, an activist still raging against the lack of financial support and mainstream acknowledgment of the AIDS crisis. David volunteers to be his “buddy” while he’s bedbound, keeping him company and conversing. He’s less bothered by how the world treats homosexuality and AIDS, and although he commits to sticking by Robert, […]

In modern day Europe, demonic possession seems to be a thing of the past, something most likely to be attributed to mental illness, and something that can be dealt with through modern medicine, not exorcism. Still, exorcisms are conducted in certain areas in the continent, and some instances don’t go the way they should. Inspired […]

An arguably tough watch, The Accused fluctuates between crime and courtroom drama, eschewing any kind of sentimentality in its storytelling. No place for pity where trauma reigns: the fact that the film is based on a real case of as gang rape means little in a world were that’s still a daily occurrence. The Accused […]

This is a slow but well-made movie about a Jehovah’s Witness family, directed by a former member of the organization. The family is made of Alex, her mother, and her older sister. Alex follows her mother and her religious teachings with the utmost loyalty, especially as she refuses a blood transfusion that is crucial to […]

Before Games of Thrones delivered court intrigues, shocking murders, and adulterous affairs, Queen Margot delivered all these nearly two decades earlier, depicting the dramatized, real life events of the French Wars of Religion. While it doesn’t have dragons, it has style, with some of the most stunning scenes intercut with some of the most gruesome, […]

When we think about dog films, we think about overly sentimental, feel-good flicks, with the dogs sometimes voiced by famous actors, that affirm the relationship between man and his best friend. White God is a dog movie, but it’s not that kind of dog movie. The dogs are not voiced, but yet they feel so […]

For the longest time, American media coverage was skewed to justify the presence of US forces in Arab states. Control Room unveils that bias by following Al Jazeera at the start of the Iraq War in 2003. One of the biggest Arab media outlets at the time, Al Jazeera dared to cover both sides of […]

Former Congressman Anthony Weiner just doesn’t give up. After a 2011 scandal that had him resign from office, Weiner tries to make a comeback in this documentary that follows his 2013 mayoral campaign. His passion for public service is indisputable, and despite his shortcomings, it’s hard not to root for his go-getter attempts at a […]

Many people would rather see happy, positive depictions of people like them, but sometimes, it’s important to see the sides that we don’t really like to see, but should have some awareness of, in order to address them. It’s because of this director Lee Tamahori initially thought that adapting the Maori novel Once Were Warriors […]

In response to violence, some people consider aggression as the only solution, especially in a place that cannot rely on institutions– fighting fire with fire, but fighting for the good. Tyrannosaur depicts a British town with men that only operate on a mix of this idea, but this rage becomes relentless, unceasing, and never lies […]

The Cuban bolero, not to be confused with the Spanish dance, is a Latin ballad form that spread all throughout the Americas, and even the whole world, that mixed and mingled with and influenced jazz in the 1940s and 50s. Chico & Rita celebrates this music, as well as the nightlife that made these sounds […]

Despite the subject matter, 2014 Malian drama Timbuktu still spots some humor through simple contradiction– straightforwardly depicting the occupying force enforcing certain rules upon a city, but not themselves, and with the city biting back in their own way, pointing out the silliness themselves. It’s these raw moments that lightens the entire film, humanizing both […]

Barbara (Petzold regular Nina Hoss) has fallen from grace, at least by the standards of 1980s Germany. A renowned doctor at a prestigious East Berlin hospital, she has been demoted to a paediatrician at a tiny town on the Baltic coast: a punishment for daring to try and leave the DDR. The Stasi spy on […]

Among the sea of class satires released in the last year, Triangle of Sadness is one of the better ones. Directed by Ruben Östlund (The Square, Force Majeure), the film follows an ultra-rich group of people who get stranded on an island after their luxury cruise ship sinks. The social pyramid that has long favored […]

Lauren Greenfield’s film follows the Siegel family’s decline from opulent abundance to gaudy ruin. Mega wealth, delusions of grandeur, and grotesquely opulent taste—the Siegel family were the perfect subjects for the film, which sets out to document their most lavish expense: their Versailles home, a mansion sprawling more than 85,000 square feet and modeled after […]

The Western had its heyday in the 60s, but the decades have proven that there’s still stories from the deserts that we haven’t heard yet, and gems that twist the genre on its head. The Proposition is a unique Western, being from the East, in Australia where the Brits have started to form colonies. As […]

In Fatih Akin’s In the Fade, Katja is seeking justice after the killings of her Turkish husband and their young son in a terrorist bomb attack. Diane Kruger in the role of Katja delivers a powerful and rather grueling performance, for which she was awarded Best Actress at Cannes Film Festival. Her grief is vivid […]

When a regime falls, what follows isn’t a clean slate– it lingers, and it haunts those that were able to survive, part due to what was done to them and part to what they have done. Marshland ostensibly is a police procedural investigating a series of women murdered in rural Spain, but it’s also a […]

For better or worse, death strikes us all, fast and unexpectedly. It’s tough enough if the death is caused by ill health or accidents, but when premeditated by another person– it can be easy to lose faith in a higher power. Secret Sunshine depicts a grieving mother trying to start a new life in the […]

The Square is a peculiar movie about a respected contemporary art museum curator as he goes through a few very specific events. He loses his wallet, his children fight, the art he oversees is does not make sense to an interviewer… Each one of these events would usually require a precise response but all they […]

The main subject that Hold Your Fire promises to be about—negotiation tactics first used in resolving a New York City standoff at a sporting goods store—is ultimately its most least interesting aspect. These supposed tactics aren’t too well, and they end up putting a damper on all the human drama that comes before it, which […]

It’s 1984 and miners in England are on strike against Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s plans to close pits. Their cause has unlikely appeal for Mark Ashton, a human rights activists who decides to take a group of people who had joined an early Gay Pride parade in London to rural England to show support for […]

This is a hard movie to describe, but I’ll do my best without giving too much away. The movie takes place in three separate segments that eventually come together. Half of the story takes place in Germany, half in Turkey, with almost all of the central six characters spending time in both countries while either […]