Tackling politics, feminism, the climate and police brutality, our staff pick features critically-acclaimed and award-winning human rights films and series from around the world.
From an underdog taking on the UK’s banking system, to a refugee horror film and a unique take on the American civil rights movement, these shows offer a way to engage with issues that often go unreported.
His House (2020)
His House is a spine-tingling modern horror film focused on a Sudanese couple who have arrived in the UK as asylum seekers. In his debut feature film, Remi Weekes uses the haunted house genre to explore the complexities of fleeing conflict, the dangers of the journey to safety and the impossibility of escaping the terrors of the past.
For horror film fans, this intense experience has some expertly timed frights. But the beauty of this film is in the depth of the characters and their story. By the closing scenes, viewers are left with some sense of the anguish faced by many refugees, facing impossible choices to find safety, and carrying the burden long after the journey’s end.
There is so much room to go wrong in taking a horror approach to such weighty topics, but Weekes handles the story masterfully, keeping taut the thread connecting the horror with the characters’ inner turmoil. Wunmi Mosaku and Ṣọpẹ Dìrís are compelling as the couple attempting to rebuild life in a London suburb. Watch here.
Find a diverse collection of stories about refugee experiences here.
Daughters (2024)
This Sundance prize-winning documentary takes the viewer on an emotional journey to unravel the multiple layers of impact that incarceration has on inmates and their families. A group of young girls are gearing up to be reunited with their fathers in a daddy-daughter dance date to be held at the prison where the men are serving their sentences. The personal stories – of both the fathers who are attempting to manage their lives behind bars and the daughters whose lives are profoundly impacted by the absence of their dads – highlight the structural problems and injustices of the US prison system. The words and work of the woman behind the Date With Dad programme will inspire viewers, reminding us how small acts of resistance, connection and creativity can change lives. Watch here.
Find out about the activists campaigning for justice and equality for incarcerated women here.
Bank of Dave (2023)
Minibus salesman Dave Fishwick makes an unlikely hero, but he’ll have you cheering him along as he takes on the UK’s biggest banks in this David and Goliath battle. This is the true story of Dave, from Burnley, a working-class man and self-made millionaire who made his fortune selling minibuses.
Seeing his local Lancashire community struggle as would-be entrepreneurs and small business owners are failed by the big banks, Dave decides to open his own bank – but not without a fight from the financial regulators. The story highlights the absurdity and inhumanity of the UK’s broken banking laws, asking who should be in control of people’s money and imagining how different things could be if the economic system prioritised people and justice, not profit.
Dave’s underdog story is recreated in the 2023 comedy-drama (with a little poetic licence), but for the true story viewers can meet the man himself in a three-part Channel 4 documentary series made 10 years earlier, following Dave’s uphill battle to persuade England’s financial authorities to issue the first new banking licence in 150 years. Watch here.
Take a look back over varied views on economic justice in our Perspectives on Prosperity series.
Bank of Dave – Episode 1 from David Fishwick on Vimeo.
Rustin (2023)
This drama offers a distinctive perspective on the 1963 March on Washington. While historical accounts often highlight Martin Luther King Jr and his “I Have a Dream” speech, “Rustin” shifts the focus to the instrumental figure behind the march’s conception, Bayard Rustin. Rustin played a significant role in the US Civil Rights movement through advocating for both socialism and gay rights.
Navigating societal hostility directed at Rustin’s Blackness and sexuality, the film serves as both an ode to Rustin and an exploration of grassroots activism that left a crucial mark on American history. Watch here.
Find stories about protests around the world here.
Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich (2020)
This four-part limited series is a horrifying watch, shining a light not only on the crimes and deception of the notorious (and now dead) convicted sex offender, but on the system that failed to serve justice on the billionaire. Four hour-long episodes bring together a chorus of first-person testimonies, triangulating an infuriating amount of evidence from survivors whose lives have been forever changed. The words of Virginia Giuffre take on a particularly profound and painful meaning in the wake of her death five years after this documentary’s release. Watch here.
Find a more uplifting story about rape survivors reframing their stories with a dramatic art exhibition here.
13th (2016)
This award-winning documentary starts out with a stark fact: The US accounts for just 5% of the world’s population, but has 25% of the world’s prisoners.
Over the next hour and 40 minutes scholars, activists and politicians will unpick how “the land of the free” has the highest rate of incarceration in the world, interrogating the rhetoric of “black criminality” and expertly connecting the dots between the system of slavery abolished by the 13th amendment in 1865 and today’s prison population.
Picking up a BAFTA, a Peabody Award and a Critics’ Choice Award, documentaries don’t get a much better reception than this. When you’ve finished, tune into the Netflix interview between Oprah and 13th filmmaker Ava DuVernay. Watch here.
Read more about the campaign to to defund America’s repressive criminal justice system and free women prisoners here.
E-Team (2014)
Crucial viewing for anyone with an interest in humanitarian work, this documentary displays the courage of human rights activists tasked with providing emergency response.
Following the members of the eponymous Emergency Team of Human Rights Watch, the cameras show family life at home for married couple Anna Neistat and Ole Solvang as well as capturing them dashing over the Syrian border under cover of darkness – and a burqa.
One of the film’s most striking moments displays the bravery of human rights activist Fred Abrahams, as he delivers his courtroom testimony against Slobodan Milosevic, while the dictator stares at Abrahams intimidatingly, sitting just a few feet away. Extraordinary work by otherwise ordinary people. Watch here.
Find an interview with E-Team star Anna Neistat here.
Saving Capitalism (2017)
If you’re looking for a bite-size guide to economics, this is for you. Consider it a crash course on the US economy, how it came to be where it is today and how repugnantly unequal and unjust it is.
Even-handed in his assessment, former Secretary of Labor Professor Robert Reich presents the documentary, based on his 2015 book of the same name. (He’s the man who introduced Bill and Hillary (then Rodham) Clinton and the film briefly features pictures of them before they were fine-tuned for screens across America.)
By the end of the 73 minutes you’ll appreciate the problems of a free market ruled by banks, big business and the elite, you’ll be shocked by phenomenal power of pharmaceutical companies, and you’ll likely be raging against the inequality of it all and questioning how the 99% can change the system. Watch here.
Find five post-capitalism politics books every student should read here.
The White Helmets (2016)
This Oscar-winning documentary is an inspiring account of the brave, apolitical Syrian volunteers who scramble to disaster sites, launching search and rescue missions to reach the victims of airstrikes.
The 40-minute film follows a local group of White Helmets who brave the bombsites of devastated Aleppo. The volunteers were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their work in saving hundreds of thousands of lives. It’s a moving testament to the human cost of conflict, but also to the courage and humanity of those who risk everything to respond to it. Watch here.
Donate to support the White Helmets here.
On My Skin (Sulla mia pelle) (2018)
This haunting and heart-wrenching film follows the last painful days in the life of 31-year-old Stefano Cucchi, who died in police custody in Italy in 2009. Small-time drug dealer Stefano finds himself arrested, jailed and brutally beaten by a gang of police officers.
Director Alessio Cremonini chooses not to show the violence behind a closed door. Instead the focus is on the consequences – the slow deterioration of Cucchi, an amateur boxer, into a frail shadow of his former self. Frustratingly, time and time again Cucchi has the opportunity to point the finger at his abusers, but viewers feel his fear, reticence and resignation. A painful portrait of police brutality. Watch here.
Read more about the fight for justice by Stefano’s sister Ilaria Cucchi here.
First They Killed My Father (2017)
Cambodian author and human rights activist Loung Ung recounts the horrors she suffered as a child under the rule of the Khmer Rouge. With screenplay by Angelina Jolie. Watch here.
Find out about the little-known Isaaq Genocide in Somaliland here.
Time: The Kalief Browder Story (2017)
Executively produced by Shawn “Jay Z” Carter and directed by Jenner Furst, this six-part series examines the injustice of the US judicial system through the story of Kalief Browder.
In 2010, 16-year old Kalief was accused of the theft of a backpack. Awaiting a trial, he was imprisoned in Riker’s Island, a violent prison complex, where he spent three years (two of which were in solitary confinement). He was released after his lawyer claimed there was insufficient evidence to convict him: he spent his late adolescent years imprisoned for a crime he did not commit. Watch here.
Read more about the dangers to disabled people in prison and police custody in the UK here.
Winter on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom (2015)
This documentary follows the civil rights movement in Ukraine, developing from a series of peaceful student demonstrations into a violent revolution, and showing citizens facing down riot police as the country rises up against President Viktor Yanukovych.
Although Oscar-nominated, the documentary has been accused of showing a “whitewashed” version of the Maidan uprising by “glossing over” the role played by the far-right in the revolution. Watch here.
Find out more about the far-right in Ukraine here.
The Confession Tapes (2017)
In this seven-part series, director Kelly Loudenberg investigates various cases where detectives extracted confessions under extreme circumstances to get a conviction. Maintaining a focus on the circumstances that led to these false confessions, the series has drawn many fans of Netflix’s crime docu-series Making a Murderer.
The show leaves the audience questioning: Would I ever confess to a crime I did not commit? Watch here.
Main image by Lacuna artist Aura Bamber.
Thanks to contributors Sarah Bamberger and Bella Segal.
This article updates and expands a collection we previously published.
