Tear Behçet Apart 

One Christmas Eve, after a sudden snowstorm, a group of teenagers will discover how their lives will change forever.

This film manages to be simultaneously topical and timeless. Without being preachy, it highlights society’s flawed relationship with tech; insights into the complex ideas of family struggle are expertly dispersed among a perfectly paced and balanced story.

The Weight is highly recommended, will transport you back to its Great Depression-era setting and will have you rooting for the protagonist harder than most films this year

Not only can viewing Not My Dog inspire people to adopt a dog that may be facing tremendous odds, but even that simple action of watching has a social effect. 

Netflix’s Shadow and Bone has a complicated relationship with race. It has a diverse cast, but not without its problems. Based on Leigh Bardugo’s two book series, the show features characters from the Shadow and Bone trilogy, which is very straight and white, and the Six of Crows duology, which is much more diverse. When bringing together a cast and writing about these characters, the team behind the show expanded upon some of the representation missing from the first trilogy, then seemed to take away representation from the duology. Shadow and Bone seems to play a bit of a push and pull game when it comes to portraying diversity onscreen.

This animated Christmas movie is based on the classic novel of the same name.