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Should film festivals be more than just screenings and red carpets? Should they prompt us to think about the role cinema plays in the world? Novelist Arundhati Roy certainly thinks so. She pulled out of the jury at the Berlin festival in protest at jury president Wim Wenders’ claim that films should “stay out of politics”; she said Wenders’ stance was “unconscionable”, and that to “hear [him] say that art should not be political is jaw-dropping.”
Wenders had suggested that cinema is a way to build empathy, but not directly change politicians’ minds. However this is simply not true. Some films – both documentary and narrative – have not only changed public opinion about social issues but led directly to legislation. Despite evidence to the contrary, politicians are people too. They can be moved. And sometimes they are even moved to action.
A Fantastic Woman
Sebastián Lelio’s 2017 drama about a transgender woman fighting to be accepted by her dead partner’s family was a huge success internationally, winning the best foreign language film Oscar. But it was in Chile, where it was filmed and set, that it had the biggest impact. Lelio was invited to the presidential palace by Chile’s then-president Michelle Bachelet, who tweeted: “It was an honor to have the team of A Fantastic Woman here in La Moneda, the people’s house.” The film helped change the political climate in Chile and led to the passing of its gender identity law, which had been stuck in congress for five years.
A Girl in the River
In 2016, Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy won her second Oscar for A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness, a short documentary about “honour” killings in Pakistan. In her acceptance speech, she said: “This week, the Pakistani prime minister has said that he will change the law on ‘honour’ killing after watching this film. That is the power of film.” The Pakistani government passed a law legislating stricter punishments for such murders and closing legal loopholes that enabled killers to escape punishment by obtaining forgiveness from family members.
A Handful of Ash
Film-makers Shara Amin and Nabaz Ahmed spent 10 years on the roads in Kurdistan speaking to women and men about the impact of female genital mutilation. The resulting documentary had a profound effect on lawmakers, and in 2011, the Kurdistan parliament passed a bill outlawing the practice. “Showing the film in parliament was a great breakthrough for us,” Ahmed told the Guardian.
Cathy Come Home
“You don’t care. You only pretend to care.” Perhaps the BBC’s most famous television play, Ken Loach’s 1966 TV film about a woman’s descent into poverty challenged the nation’s views on homelessness. The film had an undeniable impact, though its influence was slower than many realise. There were some immediate results: the film led to the creation of the homelessness charity Crisis just a few months after its broadcast. But it wasn’t until 1977 that the Housing (Homeless Persons) Act was passed, stipulating that homeless families like Cathy’s had a right to be rehoused by the council.
Mr Bates vs the Post Office
Despite people campaigning for years for justice following the Post Office Horizon scandal, it took the broadcast of a four-part ITV drama to get politicians to finally act. But act they did, by passing the Post Office (Horizon System) Compensation Act 2024 and Post Office (Horizon System) Offences Act 2024. Though not a cinematic release, Mr Bates is a clear example of powerful onscreen storytelling exposing injustice and applying pressure to enact change.
Silenced
Before creating Squid Game, Hwang Dong-hyuk directed the 2011 drama Silenced, about the sexual abuse of deaf children at Gwangju Inhwa school in South Korea. The film depicts not only the crimes but also the inadequate justice that followed, sparking public outrage. The Korean National Assembly passed the “Dogani law” (named after the Korean title of the film), which scrapped the statute of limitations for sexual crimes against children under 13 and disabled people.
The Day After
Nicholas Meyer’s television film about a nuclear attack on the US was watched by more than 100 million people when it aired in 1983. One of the people watching was the president. Ronald Reagan wrote in his diary that night that the film was, “very effective and left me greatly depressed … My own reaction was one of our having to do all we can to have a deterrent and to see there is never a nuclear war.” The drama helped shift Reagan’s mind on US nuclear policy and he adopted a more diplomatic approach that led to the signing of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in 1987.
The Snake Pit
Anatole Litvak co-directed the Why We Fight series of propaganda films with Frank Capra, but his 1948 psychological drama The Snake Pit did as much as his documentaries to shift opinion. It tells the story of a woman called Virginia in a psychiatric hospital who can’t remember how she got there. The “snake pit” refers to a large padded room where patients who are deemed beyond help are left and abandoned. Several US states changed laws to improve conditions in psychiatric hospitals as a result.
