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"It's the Economy, Stupid!"

"It's the Economy, Stupid!"

"It is easier to imagine an end to the world than an end to capitalism."
-- Frederic Jameson/Slavoj Zizek/Mark Fisher

Is it even possible to understand and engage with political economy, the invisible force that seems to shape how we live and die, via film?

How to make sense of economic history and theory, or poverty, inequality, and class relations?

With dramas like THE CLEARSTREAM AFFAIR, a story of financial corruption exposed, and THE OUTSIDER, recounting the extraordinary tale of how one young trader lost $ 4.9 Billion for a French bank, to Michael Apted’s unique documentary 56 UP, a mirror of the British class system, and Ilan Ziv’s monumental six-part CAPITALISM series, filmed in 23 countries, OVID has assembled an unmatched collection of original, illuminating, and well-argued films that take on this daunting challenge.

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"It's the Economy, Stupid!"
  • In the Aisles (w/ Franz Rogowski & Sandra Huller)

    Directed by Thomas Stuber • Drama • With Franz Rogowski, Sandra Huller • 2018 • 125 minutes

    When the reclusive Christian (Franz Rogowski, TRANSIT) takes a job working the night shift at a big box store, his new manager, Bruno from the Beverage Department (Peter Kurth, BABYLON BERLIN), teaches hi...

  • Free Lunch Society

    Directed by Christian Tod • Documentary • With Frances Fox Piven, Emmanuel Saez, Charles Alan Murray • 2017 • 92 minutes

    That basic income is a powerful idea is indisputable: land, water and air are gifts of nature. They are different from private property that humans create by their individual ...

  • Dying for Gold

    Directed by Catherine Meyburgh & Richard Pakleppa • Documentary • 2019 • 98 minutes

    In the biggest class action law suit the country had ever seen, South Africa’s largest gold mining companies were accused of knowingly exposing miners to deadly dust and disease.

    Now, harrowing underground foota...

  • Marx Reloaded

    Directed by Jason Barker • Documentary • 2011 • 52 minutes

    Today a new generation of philosophers, artists and political activists are returning to Marx's ideas in order to try to make sense of the crisis and to consider whether a world without or beyond capitalism is possible. Is the severity o...

  • Time Thieves

    Directed by Cosima Dannoritzer • Documentary • 2018 • 85 minutes

    Who hasn’t come across the situation where an airline has us printing our own boarding passes and checking in our own luggage, saving the company a fortune in working hours? Who hasn’t spent hours assembling a piece of furniture, o...

  • Capitalism: A six-part series

    1 season

    Capitalism has been the engine of unprecedented economic growth and social transformation. With the fall of the communist states and the triumph of "neo- liberalism," capitalism is by far the world's dominant ideology. But how much do we understand about how it originated, and what makes it work?...

  • Antonio Negri

    Directed by Alexandra Weltz & Andreas Pichler • Documentary • 2004 • 52 minutes

    July 1st, 1997. An elderly man arrives in Italy on a flight from Paris. The special forces of the Carabinieri immediately arrest him. Antonio Negri had returned voluntarily to his home country after 15 years of exil...

  • Bitter Money

    Directed by Wang Bing • Documentary • 2016 • 152 minutes

    The people in Wang Bing's BITTER MONEY lie in filthy, cramped apartments, stare at their phones for far too long, spend time on their balconies overlooking drab streets in which all the buildings look the same, and work long hours for litt...

  • Sunday School with Franz Hinkelammert

    Directed by Jim Finn • Documentary • 2012 • 52 minutes

    During the socialist government of Salvador Allende, Franz Hinkelammert (1931-2023) worked at the Catholic University of Chile, where there was a theological battle between the left-wing liberation theologians and the right-wing Opus Dei Cat...

  • Dreams That Money Can Buy

    Directed by Hans Richter • Drama • With Jack Bittner, Werner Brandes, Norma Cazanjian, Lauren Denny, Joseph Freeman • 1948 • 81 minutes

    Joe, a young man down on his luck, discovers he has the power to create dreams, and sets up a business selling them to others. The 'dreams' he gives to his clie...

  • Futures Market

    Directed by Mercedes Alvarez • Documentary • 2011 • 110 minutes

    A film essay in tableaux, FUTURES MARKET traces the connections between memory, public space, and the real estate bubbles that led to the international financial crisis. Beginning with Greek lyric poet Simonides of Ceos' invention o...

  • Nixon’s Reversal

    Directed by Jenny Alexander and James Rutenbeck • Documentary • 2023 • 9 minutes

    Richard Nixon was on the verge of providing guaranteed basic income for all Americans. Then a story from 1795 changed his mind and the course of history.

  • What's the Economy for, Anyway?

    Directed by John de Graaf and Hana Jindrova • Documentary • 2010 • 40 minutes

    In this film produced by John de Graaf of AFFLUENZA> fame, ecological economist Dave Batker presents a humorous, edgy, factual, timely and highly-visual monologue about the American economy today, challenging the ways ...

  • Zona Franca

    Directed by Georgi Lazarevski • Documentary • 2016 • 100 minutes

    Zona Franca is a large outdated shopping district at the heart of Chile's Patagonia, located near the Strait of Magellan. Everywhere this area shows the scars of the upheaval which transformed the last wild place of the original Am...

  • Lobster War

    Directed by David Abel • Documentary • 2019 • 74 minutes

    LOBSTER WAR is an award-winning feature documentary about a conflict between the United States and Canada over waters that both countries have claimed since the end of the Revolutionary War. The disputed 277 square miles of sea, known as t...

  • An Injury To One

    Directed by Travis Wilkerson • Documentary • 2003 • 53 minutes

    AN INJURY TO ONE provides a corrective-and absolutely compelling-glimpse of a particularly volatile moment in early 20th century American labor history: the rise and fall of Butte, Montana. Specifically, it chronicles the mysterious ...

  • The Wobblies

    Directed by Stewart Bird and Deborah Shaffer • Documentary • 1979 • 89 minutes

    Founded in Chicago in 1905, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) took to organizing unskilled workers into one big union and changed the course of American history. This compelling documentary of the IWW (or “The...

  • The Secret Life of Your Clothes

    Directed by Andy Wells • Documentary • 2016 • 59 minutes

    Each year, we give thousands of tons of our unwanted clothes to charity. But where do they actually go? It turns out most are exported to Africa. And even though we have given them away for free, our castoffs have created a multimillion-do...

  • System Error

    Directed by Florian Opitz • Documentary • 2017 • 96 minutes

    SYSTEM ERROR takes us from to the roots of the expectation of unlimited growth, particularly in the post-World War II years, to the financial crash of 2008 and beyond. Does the subsequent decade of simultaneous inequality, austerity, an...

  • The Dirty War on the National Health Service

    Directed by John Pilger • Documentary • 2019 • 106 minutes

    Britain's National Health Service, the NHS, was the world's first universal public health service. Designed to give millions of people "freedom from fear" following World War II, the NHS today is under threat of being sold off and conver...

  • A Call to Action: The Freedom Budget of 1966

    Directed by Jenny Alexander • Documentary • With Martin Luther King • 2023 • 7 minutes

    “A Call to Action: The Freedom Budget of 1966” tells the story of a little-known grassroots push for guaranteed income during the civil rights movement. 

  • Miners Shot Down

    Directed by Rehad Desai • Documentary • 2014 • 86 minutes

    In August 2012, mine workers in one of South Africa's biggest platinum mines began a wildcat strike for better wages. Six days into the strike, the police used live ammunition to brutally suppress it, killing 34 and injuring many more. Th...

  • Family Business

    Directed by Tom Cohen • Documentary • 1982 • 90 minutes

    Part of the acclaimed Middletown series.

    Howie Snyder is an archetype: a retired Marine colonel in his mid 40s, he is an American entrepreneur struggling to make his business succeed.

    Howie's Shakey's Pizza franchise in Muncie, Indiana em...

  • Davos

    Directed by Daniel Hoesl • Documentary • With Klaus Schwab, Christine Lagarde • 2021 • 99 minutes

    Looking to decipher the fractured world of ours was the driving force to make this film. We‘ve been following the everyday life in Davos for over a year. The challenges of our society are shown thro...