Sitting down in the evening after a hard days work you're likely to shun films that are thought-provoking and challenging in favour of something you can switch off to or not really watch at all. Documentaries arn't everyone's first choice, and in a sense that's understandable. Facing the true destructiveness of humans isn't everyone's cup of tea when curled up on the sofa. What's that saying? - 'ignorance is bliss'. However any educated person knows that it isn't. Being aware of what happens in the world outside your own little bubble of family, friends, work and that annoying ass neighbor with the damn loud dog is more and more crucial in our ever growing, connected world. So here are five ethically and socially conscious films that everyone should watch.
Cowspiracy
Ah the controversy around this one! On one side you have a group of people who treat it like the Bible, on the other side a group who think it's a steaming pile of cow crap. Cowspiracy explores the environmental impact of agriculture and how it's contributing infinitely more than any expert would like to admit. The film pushes to eradicate all meat eating and goes on to damn the dairy industry for their hand in the impact. It doesn't show outright abuse to cows as many people suspect, but rather an informed approach including a lot of interviews where environmentalists are not giving the answers you'd expect. It's easy to find on Netflix so what's your excuse?
The True Cost
You'll never be able to look at H&M in the same way again. A word of warning; if you can't bear to come face to face with your materialistic, selfish-ass self then don't even bother with this one. It will hands down make you feel like crap, especially if you've never heard of the 52 micro seasons of fashion. The True Cost looks at how your clothing is made and how the high street manages to pump out so many new styles with lines added every week. It confronts the modern world with its constant advertising to sell you more and, when you have the product, to make you feel like you still don't have enough. Bringing down the prices of clothing and making them cheaply to make sure the poorer people of the world have to keep on buying. There's some harrowing statistics laced throughout but I won't spoil it any further.
Forks Over Knives
Yes, it's a VEGAN documentary about being VEGAN and how bad meat is for your health. Now we've got that out of the way maybe you can sit your ass down and stop harping on about this 'bloody veganism'. Forks Over Knives takes a critical look at our modern day diets, going past the typical views on sugar to also attack the meat industry. It makes the controversial view that meat possibly causes such diseases as cancer and diabetes and pushes the vegan diet as a way to avoid them. It's highly informative, highly persuasive, and makes more than a couple of valid points against the eating of meat. Think of Cowspiracy except instead of the environmental impacts it explores the impact meat has on your bodily health, both short and long-term.
Blackfish
Heartbreaking. If you're a lover of animals you'll find this film particularly hard to swallow. It's a high-profile problem at the moment that SeaWorld can't seem to treat their animals well, no matter how hard they 'try'. And it's not just SeaWorld. Seaquarium in Miami was recently criticized for leaving an Orca and many dolphins in their tanks to wait out hurricane Irma. Blackfish is a damning film about a killer whale named Tilikum kept in captivity by Sea World who was involved in three peoples death. You'll be taken on an emotional rollercoaster following the lives of some of their main attractions that'll leave you a blubbering wreck.
An Inconvenient Truth
Donald Trump is an idiot. If you don't believe climate change is happening then I'm not too sure even this giant flashing warning sign of a film will change your mind. There are plenty of environmental documentaries out there about extinction, flooding, global warming as well as many others surrounding similar topics, but the most well known of them all has to be An Inconvenient Truth. In this eye-opening and deeply sobering film Al Gore schools us all on how humanity is slowly (well, not so slowly anymore) but surely destroying the world and ultimately ourselves. The film came out about the same time as The Day After Tomorrow so imagine that in documentary form.
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