Holiday Gift
Films and Shows for the Pro-Democracy Movement
If you’re looking for a little education, escape, and inspiration over the holidays, check out these movies and streaming shows. Happy Holidays!
10 MOVIES: Collective Power Changes Everything
1. Pride (2014)
Why it matters: True story of LGBTQ activists supporting striking miners in 1980s Britain. Shows the power of unlikely coalitions building solidarity across difference. Funny, joyful, and ultimately victorious. Perfect example of “strange bedfellow” organizing.
2. Selma (2014)
Why it matters: Not just MLK hagiography - shows the strategic planning, internal debates, and organizing infrastructure behind the Voting Rights Act victory. Demonstrates that movements require tactics, not just moral righteousness.
3. Judas and the Black Messiah (2021)
Why it matters: Essential viewing on state repression tactics, coalition building, how resistance movements organize against overwhelming power, while being real about the costs of resistance.
4. Milk (2008)
Why it matters: Harvey Milk’s coalition-building and grassroots organizing in 1970s San Francisco. Ends tragically but shows how one generation’s work creates foundation for future victories. About building power block by block.
5. No (2012)
Why it matters: How Chilean activists used creativity and joy to defeat Pinochet’s dictatorship through a referendum. Perfect example of “humor over fear” and how movements win through culture, not just confrontation. Shows democracy can be reclaimed.
6. Norma Rae (1979)
Why it matters: Classic labor organizing story showing how one textile worker builds union power in hostile territory. About persistence, strategy, and the power of collective bargaining. Movements need institutional power, not just protests.
7. Sorry to Bother You (2018)
Why it matters: Wild satire about labor organizing, racial capitalism, and worker solidarity. Shows how economic power and organizing intersect with racial justice. Weird, creative, and ultimately about collective action winning.
8. Documenting June 4th (2024)
Why it matters: About citizen journalists preserving the memory of Tiananmen Square. Shows why documentation and bearing witness matter - authoritarian power requires memory loss. We preserve the record.
9. Quo Vadis, Aida? (2020)
Why it matters: Bosnian film about Srebrenica massacre. Devastating but essential. Shows the costs of the international community’s failure to act. A reminder of why pro-democracy movements must win - the alternative is real.
10. The Inconvenient Indian (2020)
Why it matters: Indigenous resistance and resilience told by Indigenous people. Shows centuries of survival against genocidal regimes. If movements can survive 500 years of colonialism, we can survive this.
10 STREAMING SHOWS: Long-Form Resistance
1. Pachinko (Apple TV+)
Why it matters: Multi-generational Korean family surviving Japanese colonialism and discrimination. About dignity, survival, and building community under oppression. Shows ordinary people’s extraordinary resilience across decades.
2. Andor (Disney+)
Why it matters: Best Star Wars content isn’t about Jedi - it’s about ordinary people building a rebellion. Shows how movements recruit, organize, and sacrifice. The prison break sequence is a masterclass in collective action. Actually about fascism.
3. The Good Fight (Paramount+)
Why it matters: Legal drama about resisting during Trump era (thinly veiled). Shows lawyers, activists, and citizens navigating authoritarian creep. Funny, smart, and doesn’t pretend law alone will save us - shows the frustration and the fight.
4. Treme (HBO)
Why it matters: Post-Katrina New Orleans rebuilding through culture, community, and mutual aid. About how communities survive government abandonment by building their own infrastructure. Joy as resistance.
5. Years and Years (HBO)
Why it matters: British family living through democratic collapse over 15 years. Dark but shows resistance at every stage - from protests to underground railroads. Ends with hope. Shows how ordinary people make choices as things deteriorate.
6. Stateless (Netflix)
Why it matters: Australian immigration detention drama based on true events. Shows how bureaucracy enables human rights violations, but also how individuals resist within systems. About bearing witness and refusing complicity.
7. When They See Us (Netflix)
Why it matters: Central Park Five story. Shows the power of the carceral state but also families, communities, and activists refusing to let injustice stand. Movements eventually win - it takes decades but they win.
8. City on a Hill (Showtime)
Why it matters: 1990s Boston corruption and reform movements. Shows how corruption becomes systemic and how coalitions across race and class can challenge it. About building unlikely alliances.
9. The Gilded Age (HBO)
Why it matters: Not explicitly political but shows how social movements (women’s rights, labor organizing, Black economic power) challenged the original oligarchs. We’ve been here before and movements won then too.
10. Abstract: The Art of Design - Neri Oxman episode (Netflix)
Why it matters: Sounds random but: shows how we build the material infrastructure for the future we want. Movements need culture, art, and design. We don’t just resist - we build alternatives.
DOCUMENTARIES (Movements Need Real Stories)
Crip Camp (Netflix)
Why it matters: Disability rights movement creating the ADA. Shows how a summer camp became a movement that changed American law. Perfect example of building power over decades.
Knock Down the House (Netflix)
Why it matters: AOC and other progressive women primarying establishment Democrats in 2018. Shows grassroots organizing winning against money and power. Most lose but enough win to matter.
13th (Netflix)
Why it matters: Ava DuVernay’s analysis of mass incarceration. Essential understanding of how carceral state was built - which helps us understand how to dismantle it.
Whose Streets? (Hulu)
Why it matters: Ferguson uprising told by the people who organized it. About Black Lives Matter origins and how movements emerge from communities, not leaders.
The Act of Killing (various)
Why it matters: Indonesian genocide survivors confront perpetrators. Harrowing but shows how societies reckon with authoritarian violence. Memory and truth-telling as resistance.
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HOW TO USE THIS LIST
For organizing groups:
Host watch parties with discussion guides
Use specific scenes for strategy sessions (prison break in Andor = collective action; referendum in No = creative tactics)
Connect fictional stories to real organizing work
For burnout recovery:
Pride, Treme, Pachinko for joy and resilience
Andor for “we’re part of something bigger”
Crip Camp for “movements win over time”
For strategic thinking:
Selma (strategy and coalition-building)
No (culture and creativity)
The Good Fight (navigating institutions)
For when you’re losing hope:
Years and Years (shows collapse but also resistance at every stage)
When They See Us (justice delayed is painful but movements persist)
The Inconvenient Indian (500 years of survival means we can survive this)
Hi Scot, Thanks for the great list! In lieu of the film "Milk" I would much more highly recommend the documentary on which it is based, "The Times of Harvey Milk" where you can see Harvey himself in action -- as you say, the real story.
Thank you! I teach, and it has been difficult to identify films, books, etc. that are both worthy and that depict resistance positively directly.