Participant Media.
Description
Inspired by the powerful true story of a young Ruth Bader Ginsburg, On the Basis of Sex depicts a then-struggling attorney and new mother facing adversity in her fight for equal rights. When Ruth takes on a ground-breaking case, she knows the outcome could alter the courts' view of gender discrimination. Stronger together, Ruth teams up with her husband, Martin Ginsburg, to fight the case that catapults her into one of the most important public figures...
3) Lincoln
Description
A revealing drama that focuses on the 16th president's tumultuous final months in office. In a nation divided by war and the strong winds of change, Lincoln pursues a course of action designed to end the war, unite the country, and abolish slavery. With the moral courage and fierce determination to succeed, his choices during this critical moment will change the fate of generations to come.
5) Roma
Appears on list
Description
With his eighth and most personal film, Alfonso Cuaron recreated the early 1970s Mexico City of his childhood, narrating a tumultuous period in the life of a middle-class family through the experiences of Cleo, the indigenous domestic worker who keeps the household running. Charged with the care of four small children abandoned by their father, Cleo tends to the family even as her own life is shaken by personal and political upheavals.
6) RBG
Description
At the age of 85, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has developed a lengthy legal legacy while becoming an unexpected pop culture icon. But the unique personal journey of her rise to the nation's highest court has been largely unknown, even to some of her biggest fans - until now. RBG explores Ginsburg's life and career.
7) Wonder
Description
Based on the New York best seller, this tells the incredibly inspiring and heartwarming story of August Pullman, a boy with facial differences who enters fifth grade, attending a mainstream elementary school for the first time.
9) Shot caller
Description
After a DUI sent him down the rabbit hole of the American prison system, Jacob Harlon was transformed into Money, a stoic and ruthless prison gangster. Upon his release from prison, he learns that the grip of his new family, the prison gang, goes beyond bars. Chased by law enforcement and threatened by his incarcerated 'protectors', he must orchestrate one last dangerous crime.
11) Promised land
Description
Corporate salesman Steve Butler has been dispatched to the rural town of McKinley with his sales partner to offer much-needed relief to the economically hard-hit residents in exchange for drilling rights to their properties. As they grapple with a surprising array of both open hearts and closed doors, the outsiders soon discover the strength of an American small town at a crossroads.
12) Just mercy
Description
A powerful and thought-provoking true story follows young lawyer Bryan Stevenson and his history-making battle for justice. After graduating from Harvard, Bryan had his pick of lucrative jobs. Instead, he heads to Alabama to defend those wrongly condemned or who were not afforded proper representation, with the support of local advocate Eva Ansley. One of his first and most incendiary cases is that of Walter McMillian.
13) The informant!
Description
The U.S. government decides to go after an agri-business giant with a price-fixing accusation based on the evidence submitted by their star witness, vice president turned informant Mark Whitacre. The FBI needs evidence, so Whitacre eagerly agrees to wear a wire and carry a hidden tape recorder in his briefcase, imagining himself as a kind of de facto secret agent.
14) The fifth estate
Description
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and his colleague Daniel Domscheit-Berg team up to become underground watchdogs of the very powerful. They create a platform that allows whistleblowers to anonymously leak covert data. But when Assange and Berg gain access to the biggest trove of confidential intelligence documents in U.S. history, they battle each other and a defining question of our time: what are the costs of keeping secrets in a free society, and...
15) Spotlight
Appears on list
Description
The riveting true story of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Boston Globe investigation that would rock the city and cause a crisis in one of the world's oldest and most trusted institutions. When the newspaper's tenacious 'Spotlight' team of reporters delve into allegations of abuse in the Catholic Church, their year-long investigation uncovers a decades-long cover-up at the highest levels of Boston's religious, legal, and government establishment.
16) Circumstance
Description
A coming-of-age story set in the world of Iranian youth culture, filled with sex, drugs and defiance. A wealthy family struggles to contain their teenage daughter's growing sexual rebellion and her brother's dangerous obsession.
17) The soloist
Description
In 2005, the only thing hurting Los Angeles Times columnist and recent bike accident victim Steve Lopez more than his banged-up face was his pressing need for story ideas. He soon discovers Nathaniel Ayers, a skid row schizophrenic street musician, who possesses extraordinary talent - even though he only has half-broken instruments to play. Inspired by Nathaniel's story, Lopez writes an acclaimed series of articles about him and attempts to do more...
Description
"On Black Friday 2012, four African-American teenagers stopped at a gas station to buy gum and cigarettes. One of them, Jordan Davis, argued with Michael Dunn, a white man parked beside them, over the volume of music playing in their car. The altercation turned to tragedy when Dunn fired 10 bullets at the unarmed boys, killing Davis almost instantly. 3 1/2 minutes, ten bullets explores the danger and subjectivity of Florida's Stand Your Ground self-defense...
19) Final account
Description
An urgent portrait of the last living generation of everyday people to participate in Adolf Hitler's Third Reich. Over a decade in the making, the film raises vital, timely questions about authority, conformity, complicity and perpetration, national identity, and responsibility, as men and women ranging from former SS members to civilians in never-before-seen interviews reckon with their memories, perceptions and personal appraisals of their own roles...
Description
"The nightmare of war is seen through the eyes of one of its most tragic casualties--a child soldier--in this harrowing vision of innocence lost from Cary Joji Fukunaga. Based on the acclaimed novel by Uzodinma Iweala, Beasts of No Nation unfolds in an unnamed, civil-war-torn West African country, where the young Agu (Abraham Attah), in a haunting debut performance) witnesses carnage in his village before falling captive to a band of rebel soldiers...