When the country rises in rebellion against your dictatorial rule, we imagine that could be quite difficult. But it makes for a striking movie in 2014’s The President. Never naming an actual country, but based generally on real world revolutions, the film plucks a dictator and his grandson into the poverty that his regime has inflicted upon its people, and in turn, was inflicted back onto them and their cronies, in a cycle of revenge that doesn’t seem to end, and that won’t ever end, if someone’s starving. It’s not a film with an easy-to-match metaphor, but The President nonetheless is a striking portrait of a city violently changing hands.

One might argue that taking the perspective of a dictator would be humanizing them, but there’s a point to be made that many movements for change have gone awry the moment the movement refuses to self-correct.