The Squirrels in the Attic (2020)

The heroes of the Mushroom Kingdom make their way to the big screen in this animated movie.

Alongside A Drowning Man, I Signed The Petition, 3 Logical Exits, and A World Not Ours, A Man Returned continues to paint a realistic portrait of the Refugee Crisis that eschews the Western gaze and stereotype. These are real portraits painted by a director with lived experience, cultural connection and an amazing eye for visuals.

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.

I hadn’t heard of it either until recently—and yet, it’s one of the highest grossing movies of all time.

Our protagonists perform as the opposite gender while still preserving the parts of their personalities that makes themselves who they are.

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.