The following films have been hugely influential, raising awareness
and bringing about change in areas from climate change to gay rights.
A Girl in the River
Around the world, 5,000 women’s lives are taken each year in so-called “honour killings”. A Girl in the River,
from Oscar-winner and Young Global Leader Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, tells
the story of Saba Qaisera, a young woman who survived an attempted
murder at the hands of her father. Her only crime? Falling in love with
the wrong person.
Even after the events, Obaid-Chinoy found
that the father could not understand why what he had done was wrong.
“He felt justified in trying to kill his own daughter. He felt it was
his duty as a father and husband to protect his family from the
‘dishonour’ Saba brought on them by falling in love and getting
married.”
Not everyone agreed with him. “This week, the Pakistani prime
minister said that he will change the law on honour killing after
watching this film,” Obaid-Chinoy said in her Oscar acceptance speech.
“That is the power of film.”
Blackfish
In 2015, SeaWorld announced
it was ending its controversial “Shamu Show” and replacing it with an
“all-new orca experience” to focus on the “natural behaviour of whales”.
Although they didn’t say as much, their decision was almost certainly a result of the public outcry created by the 2013 documentary Blackfish.
The film drew attention to the dangers of keeping orcas in captivity –
for both the animals and their human trainers. In the years following
its release, the documentary took its toll on the company’s reputation,
visitor numbers and share price (which dropped from $39 in 2013 to $18 at the time of the SeaWorld announcement).
The Day After Tomorrow
In this blockbuster hit, the world is facing a second ice age: a
tidal wave submerges New York City, tornadoes rip through downtown Los
Angeles, and hail stones the size of grapefruits batter Tokyo. While the
science behind the film was called out by many climatologists, it was
still one of the most commercially successful movies of its time – it
made almost half a billion dollars worldwide in just over a month.
According to Yale researchers,
it also helped increase awareness on climate change, and encouraged
people to consider how their actions could help avert such an
environmental crisis: “Across the board, the movie appears to have had a
strong influence on watchers’ risk perceptions of global warming,” the
academics concluded.
Cathy Come Home
While homelessness is still described as an “invisible problem” –
mainly because many of us find it easier to ignore – it’s at least less
of a taboo subject than it was in the past. Before Cathy Come Home was
released in 1966, nobody spoke about the issue: “Homelessness hadn’t
been in the spotlight before,” said the drama’s director Ken Loach.
After the drama aired, all that changed. “The sense of public
outrage that this was happening sort of grew. It became like a storm
that gathered pace.” At the same time, the UK’s first and leading
charity on homelessness, Shelter, was founded. Even today, the impact of
the film is still being felt: “We were expecting that there would be a
bit of talk about it but no one could expect that 40 years later we’d
still be talking about it and that Cathy would become part of the
national language about public events in politics,” Loach said in 2006.
Philadelphia
It can be difficult for anyone who didn’t live through the start of
the AIDS epidemic in the early 1980s to understand just how much
stigma, fear and misunderstanding surrounded the disease. A 1985 poll in the US
found that 51% of Americans felt people living with AIDS should be
placed in quarantine, and 15% thought they should be identified with
tattoos.
When Philadelphia was released in 1993, it helped changed those
perceptions. The film follows the journey of a young gay lawyer, played
by Tom Hanks, who is fired by his firm after discovering he has AIDS. It
was the first Hollywood film to tackle the issue of AIDS and
homophobia, and it helped destigmatize a subject that until then few had
wanted to discuss: “It got people talking about HIV in a way that they
really weren’t, because it was always that thing we really didn’t want
to talk about,” said HIV advocate Gary Bell.
Super Size Me
For an entire month, in an attempt to establish the damage fast
food does to our bodies, Super Size Me director Morgan Spurlock ate only
one thing: McDonald’s. After the experiment was over, he had gained 25
pounds, his cholesterol levels had shot up, and his doctor said he had
the liver of an alcoholic.
The documentary reignited the debate on fast food – everything from
how bad it is for our health to the way it is marketed at children. A
few weeks after the film was released, McDonald’s ditched its super size
option and started introducing healthier items to its menus, although
they deny this was in response to the documentary.
Rosetta
Rosetta, described on its release
as a “wrenching work of social realism”, follows the life of a young,
poor Belgian teenager living on a trailer park with her alcoholic
mother. When she’s not looking after her mum, she’s desperately trying
to find and hold on to a job, in the vain hope of working her way out of
her situation.
The movie not only touched critics – against all odds, it won the Palme D’Or at the Cannes film festival – but also Belgian policy-makers. The same year, they voted through “Rosetta’s Law” to protect the rights of teenage workers in the country.
Trevor
This Oscar-winning short film follows the life of Trevor, a gay
13-year-old who attempts suicide after being ostracized by his peers
because of his sexuality. Shortly before the film was released, director
Peggy Rajski realized there was no place in the US for young people
like Trevor to turn to at their time of need. With the help of mental
health experts, she established and secured the funds for a 24-hour
crisis hotline for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning
youth.
Almost 20 years on, the Trevor Project has helped hundreds and
thousands of young people, and also provides workshops and online
resources.
The End of the Line
There are plenty more fish in the sea, right? Maybe not. As The End
of the Line highlighted, overfishing is having a devastating effect on
our oceans, and unless we take action fast, we’ll soon be running out.
The goal of the film was simple: raise consumer and corporate awareness
on the issue and increase marine reserves.
More than 4 million people watched the film in
the UK alone, including the country’s prime minister. After being shown
the film, large UK retailers, from Marks and Spencer to Pret A Manger,
changed their fishing source policies to ensure they were sustainable.
The film’s production team also went on to launch a charity, the Blue
Marine Foundation, to continue with the campaign.
Selma
The movie Selma, which tells the story of Martin Luther King Jr’s
campaign to secure equal voting rights, was released almost 50 years
after the events it depicts. But it came at a time of renewed racial
tensions in the US and a movement to recognize that black lives matter.
The film crew and cast were therefore keen to align themselves with
this movement and bring attention to the fact that while progress had
been made, there is still much more to do. “You watch the film and you
understand how it feels to be someone in 1965, being shocked about what
they saw on TV, because it just happened to you”, said Ava DuVernay, the film’s director, referencing the death of an unarmed black man at the hands of the police and the events that followed.
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