10 Movies for Anarchists and the Anarcho-Curious

I have a fun little bitlet for you today, a blog post I wrote recently for the Institute for Anarchist Studies, where I am proud to serve as a board member. It's a fun list and it gives me a nice opportunity to introduce unfamiliar readers to the IAS.

It is a beautiful organization now in its 30th year, making grants to activists and writers, and publishing a journal and books such as Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements, edited by adrienne maree brown and Walidah Imarisha, and the recent anthology No Pasarán! Antifascist Dispatches from a World in Crisis.

I'm honored to support its work alongside a great board made up of folks who are deeply committed to the struggle for justice and liberation. They are also just cool people who support each other and make a lot of funny jokes during meetings. I mostly support IAS fundraising and communications and participate in the grantmaking process. We are fully supported by donations, so go give some money to IAS here.

Here's is a bit about how we view the work:

Anarchism emerged out of the socialist movement as a distinct politics in the nineteenth century. It asserted that it is necessary and possible to overthrow coercive and exploitative social relationships, and replace them with egalitarian, self-managed, and cooperative social forms. Anarchism thus gave new depth to the long struggle for freedom.

The primary concern of the classical anarchists was opposition to the state and capitalism. This was complemented by a politics of voluntary association, mutual aid, and decentralization. Since the turn of the twentieth century and especially the 1960s, the anarchist critique has widened into a more generalized condemnation of domination and hierarchy. This has made it possible to understand and challenge a variety of social relationships—such as patriarchy, racism, and the devastation of nature, to mention a few—while confronting political and economic hierarchies. Given this, the ideal of a free society expanded to include sexual liberation, cultural diversity, and ecological harmony, as well as directly democratic institutions.

Anarchism’s great refusal of all forms of domination renders it historically flexible, politically comprehensive, and consistently critical—as evidenced by its resurgence in today’s global anticapitalist movement.

I wrote this post about movies for anarchists for the IAS blog and we ran it as a series of social media posts and people really seemed to like it so I thought YOU might like it.

I suppose you could ask, why write about movies at a time like this or, for that matter, why take the time to support and engage with political theory during a time when so much action is demanded of us? What does watching Andor or No Other Choice or writing an article for a journal do for us while we are surrounded with real world, real time suffering? And to that I would say, that is a rude ass question how dare you. No, it is actually a pretty important question that is worth considering, as Marc Fisher did when arguing in Capitalist Realism that a movie like Wall-E, "performs our anti-capitalism for us, allowing us to continue to consume with impunity."

I would answer the question by first pointing out that art, theory, and direct action are in no way mutually exclusive, and further, are inseparable components of the struggle. If we don't engage creatively and intellectually with the ideas that form our social movements, we cannot make forward progress, doomed to relive the same failures over and over like Bill Murray in that one movie the second Ghostbusters reboot.

But I would also point to two of my favorite principles in the work IAS does. In addition to directly supporting activists with grants and other resources, we seek to make the ideas that make up antifascism and anticapitalism accessible to a broader audience, including those who are just finding their way to the fight. We want to break these ideologies out of the academy and activist cliques.

Second, as in the case of Octavia's Brood, a big part of our mission is supporting "radical visions for a better future and the theories and actions to help us get there." In fiction, especially, we are drawing a map of a just world that has not yet existed. In the darkest of times, we desperately need creative portrayals of liberatory struggles. We need them to learn about resistance, to practice resistance inside of our heads, and finally, to remind ourselves that anything is possible. All of these movies do one or more of those things. Ok, here's my listicle:

10 Movies for Anarchists and the Anarcho-Curious

By Tate Williams

A handful of titles likely spring to mind when we talk about anarchist film. Most of them are a bit on the nose, you might say, showing up regularly in online lists that highlight more explicitly political classics like Salt of the Earth (1954) or The Battle of Algiers (1966).

No shade to these syllabus-worthy films, many of which are quite good. But honestly, if you’re paying attention, anarchist movies are everywhere, thriving far outside of the academy or the arthouse. They span setting and genre, are foreign and domestic, indie and Hollywood. They are high-brow and low-brow. Some of them are for kids. And many of them are fantastic.

To shine a light on some of these underrepresented gems, the following list has a couple classics, but seeks a more expansive view of what we might think of as anarchist film. One that may not use the exact terminology or delve into politics in a literal sense, but nonetheless represents what we mean when we talk about anarchism—collective liberation, non-hierarchical organizing, resistance to all forms of domination, mutual aid, and no small amount of rebellion.

Readers will surely take issue with certain picks, considering them a stretch or poking holes in their politics. That’s OK. After all, between anarchists and film nerds, you’d be hard-pressed to decide who is more eager to argue. But to maintain our broader view, we’ll call these Movies for Anarchists (and the Anarcho-Curious).

Here we go, in no particular order.

Flow (2024)

For my money the best movie you’ll find about mutual aid is this Latvian, French, and Belgian co-produced animated dystopian fantasy/sci-fi film with no dialogue. It follows a small black cat who finds solace in a flooding world, first through isolation, and then through a growing squad of other animals seeking higher ground in a small boat. Our hero is able to survive, escape loneliness, and find solidarity with a pack of hungry dogs, a covetous pod of monkeys, and even a dying sea monster. Each animal finds a cooperative role as they navigate their conflicting natures in order to survive the rising waters.

Key Scene: A hungry golden retriever resists the urge to chase a rabbit and instead helps the group rescue a Capybara from peril.

Key Quote: [chittering]

Woman at War (2018)

A funny, quirky film about a middle aged choir conductor who takes up sabotage to block construction of a Rio Tinto aluminum plant in rural Iceland. While reevaluating her dream of a pending adoption that she had sought for years, Halla escalates her war on industry, first by firing metal cables with a compound bow to short-circuit power lines, and eventually just blowing shit up. All the while, police and government officials work with the company to ramp up their pursuit, as she uses her deep connection to Iceland’s people and landscape to evade them. Fun twist at the end.

Key Scene: Halla shoots down a surveillance drone with her bow and smashes it with a hammer while wearing a paper Nelson Mandela mask.

Key Quote: “Your journey is now my journey.”

Chicken Run (2000)

It may sound like a stretch to say that this animated kids movie is a perfect representation of personal conflict within organizing groups, but hear me out. It’s a brilliant concept in which an egg farmer decides she can make more money with a machine that turns chickens into pies. After Ginger the radical chicken’s failed attempts at escape and sabotage, an American rooster named Rocky played by none other than racist-ass Mel Gibson convinces the chickens he can teach them to fly out of the farm (he cannot). Rocky is a perfect self-aggrandizing narcissist (“We have to work as a team, which means you do everything I tell you.”) whose ego derails their organizing until the chickens ultimately rally to build a giant flying chicken they power together.

Key Scene: Rocky initially refuses to help the group, saying the most important thing to him is his freedom. Ginger points out that she wants the same thing, freedom, but for all chickens.

Quote: Farmer watching chickens: “They’re organized. I know it.” 

Tout Va Bien (1972)

One for the nerds. The culmination of Jean-Luc Godard’s revolutionary period, a series of not-super-accessible films inspired by the May ’68 uprising, what makes this one stand out for me is the way it grapples with the pallid aftermath of revolution. Jane Fonda stars as a journalist who becomes trapped with her advertisement director husband, played by Yves Montand, within a strike at a Paris sausage factory. Actors directly address the audience periodically, including Montand standing in for Godard as he wrestles with post-activism malaise and expresses his doubts that a filmmaker can ever truly be a revolutionary.

Key Scene: An extended scene of stealing and ultimately rioting in a supermarket cuts to Fonda and Montand languidly discussing the future of their marriage.

Key Quote: “Outside the factory, it’s still like a factory.”

The People Under the Stairs (1991)

This is an absolutely bonkers mid-career gem from Nightmare on Elm Street’s Wes Craven, in which he goes full satire to skewer urban gentrification, portraying landlords as incestuous murderers and kidnappers. Think of it like an inverted Home Alone, in which a poor kid from a Black neighborhood infiltrates a mansion and wreaks havoc on the slumlords who live there. One of many twists is that the landlords are stealing children from the surrounding families and trapping them in the walls of their house. In a sinister touch, CNN coverage of the Iraq war periodically drones on in the background.

Key Scene: After an extended horror movie cat and mouse between the kid and the killers, the entire neighborhood shows up at the front door of the mansion to save the day.

Key Quote: “My name is Ruby Williams and I represent the association of people who have been unjustly evicted, exploited, and generally fucked over.”

Bisbee ’17 (2018)

The small mining town of Bisbee, Arizona is the site of a historic labor conflict, in which a mining company colluded with local government to squash a worker uprising in the name of the war effort. Ultimately, Bisbee’s sheriff rounded up and deported 1,300 miners, almost all Mexicans and immigrants, abandoning them in the New Mexico desert in what was essentially an ethnic cleansing of the town. It’s a powerful example of industry and the state working together to terrorize workers at home and wage war overseas. But what’s really fascinating about this documentary is that it tells the story through a historical reenactment put on by modern day Bisbee residents, who are either proud or ashamed of their ancestors’ politics. It’s a brilliant, funhouse mirror view of modern anti-immigrant and anti-worker sentiment, exposed via a little-known chapter of Southwestern labor history.

Key Scene: An unsettling interaction between present-day Bisbee residents—a wealthy white man who works for private prisons, and a young Mexican-American whose mother had been previously deported.

Key Quote: “Cities that are haunted . . . seem to straddle past and present as though two versions of the same city are overlaid on top of each other.”

Freaky Tales (2024)

If you want to see a fictionalized version of Golden State Warriors legend Sleepy Floyd hacking up white supremacists with a katana blade, have I got a movie for you. This Pulp Fiction-ish indie film is a love letter to Oakland, California, the underdogs of the world, and the multi-racial weirdo punks of the 1980s East Bay. The whole thing is a complete blast, including one of the better cameos I can recall in recent movie history, but readers here will be especially drawn to the first vignette, a retelling of a very true story in which the punk scene came together to beat the hell out of Nazis that were terrorizing legendary music venue The Gilman.

Key Scene: The telekinetic explosion of a racist cop.

Key Quote: “Who’s that for?” / “Nazis.” / “Aim for the neck.”

The Spook Who Sat By the Door (1973)

If you’ve never heard of this one, it may be because it was pulled from theaters after just three weeks, according to the filmmaker, because of pressure from the FBI. It remained a bootleg film until it was finally rereleased and given its rightful place in the canon 30 years later. Directed by Ivan Dixon (Hogan’s Heroes) and based on a book by Sam Greenlee, the filmmaker used the popularity of Blaxploitation at the time to smuggle a searing parable of Black revolution into theatrical release. The plot involves a white Senator in Chicago who, using the lack of Black CIA agents as a political sideshow, convinces the agency to hire Dan Freeman as a token hire. There, Freeman is taught the ways of guerrilla regime change only to turn the tactics against the United States government.

Key Scene: An epic training sequence

Key Quote: “You have just played out the American dream… and now, we’re gonna turn it into a nightmare.” 

Wages of Fear (1953) and Sorcerer (1977)

Let’s do a twofer. Between Henri-Georges Clouzot’s original and William Friedkin’s later adaptation of the same novel, I’d say the ’70s version is the more accessible and entertaining, starring an excellent Roy Scheider and wound tight for a modern audience. But both are absolutely worth a watch. The plot of both involves a group of societal outcasts stuck in a Central American village who, out of desperation, volunteer to drive two trucks full of nitroglycerin through a mountainous pass for an American oil company trying to seal off a fire at one of its wells. Both films are moody nail-biters, depicting the terror of life within global capitalism, where one wrong move can blow you to pieces. While it was a huge hit in France, American distributors censored Wages of Fear, cutting 20 minutes deemed anti-American or too overtly homosexual.

Key Scene: The crossing of a rickety bridge in Sorcerer is one of the more harrowing sequences captured on film.

Key Quote: “Those bums don’t have any union, nor any families. And if they blow up, nobody’ll come around bothering me for any contribution.”

How to Blow Up a Pipeline (2022)

While the plots are very different, this similarly suspenseful film by Daniel Goldhaber feels like a stylistic and thematic successor to Sorcerer, complete with synth music that echoes Tangerine Dream’s 1977 score. A fictional interpretation of the book with the same name, by climate activist and author Andreas Malm, it debates the ethics of climate sabotage through an imagined story of eight young people who decide to, well, blow up an oil pipeline in West Texas. The team hails from a range of backgrounds, all directly impacted by the climate crisis, and their ideological conflicts will feel familiar to any organizer. When it was released in the United States, 23 federal and state entities issued 35 alerts about the film, with energy regulators and law enforcement agencies urging increased security and surveillance. Whether or not you consider it such a threat to national security, it is a thoughtful and thrilling caper film, with a twisty ending that might just make you feel a little bit of hope.

Key Scene: A particularly nerve-wracking bomb-making sequence.

Key Quote: “They will defame us and claim this was violence or vandalism, but this was justified. This was an act of self-defense.”

OK there you go, I'll be in touch soon with more essays, interviews, etc. If you like this newsletter, please subscribe or share it with your friends or you could also just email me and say I like this newsletter. Hold on tight, hug your people, watch a movie.

Tate