Racial Intolerance
The degradation and maltreatment of people based on their ethnicity or skin colour has plagued the human condition since we first began travelling around the globe. This category includes films and documentaries that explore the consequences of ignorance and intolerance from the large scale horrors of political oppression and genocide ('Rabbit Proof Fence', 'Sometimes in April'), to the personal prejudices that inhibit our growth and development ('American History X', 'Crash').
To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)
8.3/10
Director: Robert Mulligan
Starring: Gregory Peck, Mary Badham, Brock Peters, Phillip Alford, Robert Duvall
Gregory Peck won an Oscar for his portrayal of Atticus Finch, the defence lawyer of a black man accused of rape in the American South. Scripted by Hor... Read more
The Young One (1961)
7.5/10
Director: Luis Bunuel
Starring: Claudio Brook, Zachary Scott, Key Meersman, Bernie Hamilton
Luis Bunuel's rarely-seen gem (and one of only two films he made in English) takes his oft-expressed themes of morality and sexual perversity and relo... Read more
Odds Against Tomorrow (1959)
7.4/10
Director: Robert Wise
Starring: Ed Begley, Gloria Grahame, Harry Belafonte, Robert Ryan, Shelley Winters
Tense and gritty, this heist thriller from master Robert Wise sees racism and crime boiling over! Ed Begley is putting together a crew for one big tak... Read more
The Defiant Ones (1958)
7.7/10
Director: Stanley Kramer
Starring: Theodore Bikel, Tony Curtis, Sidney Poitier
Nominated for nine Academy Awards including Best Picture, Stanley Kramer's The Defiant Ones broke new ground by delivering its message of racial toler... Read more
Bad Day at Black Rock (1954)
7.8/10
Director: John Sturges
Starring: Spencer Tracy, Robert Ryan, Anne Francis, Dean Jagger, Walter Brennan, John Eric...
Spencer Tracy gives one of his greatest performances in this suspenseful, action-packed drama as one-armed war vet John J. McCreedy who stirs up troub... Read more
Pinky (1949)
7.2/10
Director: Elia Kazan
Starring: Jeanne Crain, Ethel Barrymore, Ethel Waters, William Lundigan
Pinky (Jeanne Crain) is a black woman so fair-skinned she was able to pose as white throughout nursing school. Newly graduated, she flees south to vis... Read more
The Birth of a Nation (1915)
6.7/10
Director: D W Griffith
Starring: Lillian Gish, Mae Marsh, Henry B Walthall
An epic tale of the Civil War which many consider to be the single most important film in the development of cinema as an art. It is a stunning summar... Read more