War Horse
Follow Joey across the front lines to examine compassion, changing warfare, and the costs of conflict.
Teacher guide · 2-page PDF · Digital worksheet
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61 guides available
Rocky IV
Analyze national identity, propaganda, and U.S.-Soviet rivalry through popular culture.
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Amistad
Explore freedom, human rights, and the legal arguments surrounding the Amistad case.
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Flags of Our Fathers
Examine how wartime images shape heroism, public memory, and propaganda.
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Mississippi Burning
Discuss federal authority, racial injustice, and the limits of dramatic portrayals of history.
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Schindler’s List
Investigate moral responsibility, human dignity, and historical storytelling.
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12 Angry Men
Twelve jurors weigh a murder charge while impatience, assumptions, and conflicting interpretations challenge their deliberation. Study how a group tests reasons and changes its decisions.
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Hidden Figures
Three Black women use mathematical expertise, advocacy, and collaboration to advance the space program while confronting unequal access to work, recognition, and education.
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To Kill a Mockingbird
Scout’s childhood observations connect neighborhood assumptions with a trial shaped by racism. Analyze evidence, perspective, and the difference between an individual act of courage and a just system.
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Dead Poets Society
A teacher’s approach to poetry encourages students to question convention, while family and school pressures complicate the choices they make. Analyze voice, perspective, and the limits of a simple message about freedom.
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O Brother, Where Art Thou?
Three escaped prisoners travel through an exaggerated Southern landscape of music, deception, and political spectacle. Compare a wandering quest with its literary echoes and study how tone reshapes familiar motifs.
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Romeo + Juliet
Shakespeare’s lovers speak adapted original dialogue in a modern world of media, weapons, and family rivalry. Examine how visual choices and changed details shape the tragedy.
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Inside Out
Riley’s move disrupts familiar relationships while personified emotions struggle to respond. Study how listening, expressing difficult feelings, and accepting mixed emotions change the story.
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Remember the Titans
A newly combined team confronts racial division while its players and coaches learn what shared responsibility requires. Study belonging and accountability alongside the history beyond the sports story.
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Stand and Deliver
Students prepare for an advanced mathematics exam under demanding conditions, then confront doubts about their results. Analyze the relationship among effort, access, trust, and recognition.
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Akeelah and the Bee
A talented student develops her spelling skills through practice, mentorship, and community support while navigating grief, pressure, and uncertainty about belonging.
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Finding Nemo
After Nemo is taken from the reef, Marlin crosses the ocean with Dory while Nemo works with aquarium companions. The adventure explores trust, help, persistence, and protective care.
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The Crucible
Accusations transform a community as private grudges, fear, and institutional power collide. Analyze the drama’s treatment of evidence, reputation, and conscience.
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Romeo and Juliet (1968)
Young lovers seek a relationship across a family feud. This 1968 adaptation uses period settings, performance, and music to interpret Shakespeare’s tragedy.
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The Quiet Man
An American returns to Ireland and encounters a community with traditions he does not fully understand. Study belonging, cultural representation, and the film’s contested treatment of gender and conflict.
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The Great Escape
Allied prisoners organize a coordinated escape under surveillance. Examine planning, interdependence, and the gap between a suspenseful film and the documented escape.
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Little Women (1994)
The March sisters grow through work, creativity, love, and loss. Study how this 1994 adaptation gives different forms of ambition and adulthood a place in one family story.
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The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
A small traveler accepts a dangerous burden as companions confront fear, temptation, and divided loyalties. Study quest structure, characterization, and the limits of individual power.
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Moby Dick (1956)
Ishmael joins a whaling crew whose captain’s obsession threatens the entire voyage. Study narration, symbolism, and responsibility through a condensed adaptation of Melville’s novel.
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E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
A child befriends a stranded visitor and works with his siblings to help him return home. Explore empathy, trust, communication, and the tension between care and control.
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Mr. Holland’s Opus
An aspiring composer becomes a music teacher and discovers how decades of relationships reshape his idea of achievement. Study mentorship, accessibility, and the tension between professional goals and family attention.
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Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
A neglected child enters a magical school and learns that belonging requires more than recognition. Study character development, friendship, clues, and the choices an adaptation makes.
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The Outsiders (1983)
Ponyboy’s account of divided teenage communities raises questions about class, loyalty, and how people become trapped by group labels. Analyze perspective and consequences.
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Footloose (1984)
A newcomer challenges a town’s dance ban while adults and teens negotiate grief, authority, and expression. Evaluate arguments and distinguish constructive resistance from dangerous behavior.
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Jane Eyre (2011)
Jane pursues dignity and independence within institutions and relationships that constrain her. Compare the film’s reordered narrative and visual Gothic atmosphere with the novel’s voice.
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My Girl
Vada navigates friendship, family change, and loss during a summer of growing understanding. Explore how the film communicates feelings and what supportive responses can look like.
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It’s a Wonderful Life
George Bailey’s interrupted ambitions and community ties become the focus of a fantasy about value, responsibility, and interdependence. Read its hopeful ending alongside the pressures it depicts.
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Rudy
Rudy pursues a place at Notre Dame through study, work, and athletic effort. Examine persistence alongside support, opportunity, costs, and the film’s shaping of a real life.
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Saving Mr. Banks
A writer and filmmakers negotiate the adaptation of Mary Poppins while childhood memories shape the story’s emotional argument. Examine authorship, collaboration, and the limits of biographical storytelling.
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Enola Holmes
Enola searches for her missing mother while another mystery exposes struggles over power and reform. Examine how clues, audience address, and independent choices shape a detective story.
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Wonder
Auggie’s first year at school is shown alongside the experiences of friends and family. Study perspective, belonging, and actions that make inclusion more than a slogan.
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Holes
Stanley’s sentence at Camp Green Lake uncovers connections among injustice, family stories, and a hidden search. Trace the film’s timelines and evaluate who controls its explanations.
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The Giver
Jonas receives memories that expose the costs of a society organized around sameness. Examine how color, memory, and restricted language shape the film’s argument about choice.
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City of Ember
Lina and Doon investigate failing systems and neglected instructions in an underground city. Analyze how evidence, cooperation, and institutional secrecy shape their response to crisis.
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The Book Thief
Liesel’s relationship with words develops amid persecution and war. Examine narration, censorship, and acts of care while separating a literary perspective from historical evidence.
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The Hunger Games
Katniss enters a televised competition designed to reinforce political control. Examine spectacle, unequal power, and how actions acquire meaning for different audiences.
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Catherine Called Birdy
Birdy uses observation and humor to resist a marriage arranged for financial advantage. Analyze agency, family obligations, and the choices involved in presenting the past to modern viewers.
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42
Jackie Robinson faces organized resistance while entering the modern major leagues. Examine institutional discrimination, public behavior, and the limits of a dramatized account.
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Queen of Katwe
Phiona develops as a chess player through practice, family negotiation, and community support. Examine opportunity and setbacks without reducing her community to a story of poverty.
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The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
William combines reading, observation, and local materials while his family faces a food crisis. Examine problem solving alongside the social conditions that make learning and cooperation difficult.
Teacher guide · 2-page PDF · Digital worksheet
McFarland, USA
A cross-country team develops amid work, family obligations, and a coach’s changing understanding of his community. Examine teamwork and opportunity through the runners’ contributions.
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My Octopus Teacher
A filmmaker’s repeated encounters with an octopus become a personal account of attention and connection. Separate recorded behavior from narration and examine the ethics of observation.
Teacher guide · 2-page PDF · Digital worksheet
Own the Room
Five student entrepreneurs prepare to present their businesses at an international competition. Examine how evidence, resources, and personal storytelling shape a pitch and the documentary’s account of success.
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The Speed Cubers
Max Park and Feliks Zemdegs compete while sustaining a supportive relationship. Analyze how practice, community, and documentary choices complicate a simple rivalry narrative.
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I Am Eleven
Children discuss daily life, concerns, and hopes across varied settings. Compare individual perspectives while examining the choices involved in translation, interviewing, and selecting a global portrait.
Teacher guide · 2-page PDF · Digital worksheet
Spellbound (2002)
Eight young competitors prepare for a national spelling bee in different family and school contexts. Examine practice, opportunity, and how editing turns a shared event into multiple personal stories.
Teacher guide · 2-page PDF · Digital worksheet
WALL-E
A waste-collecting robot’s curiosity helps expose the consequences of a society that has delegated its choices. Analyze visual storytelling, responsibility, and the difference between fictional solutions and environmental evidence.
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Zootopia
Judy’s investigation exposes prejudice within a city that advertises opportunity for everyone. Analyze evidence, stereotyping, accountability, and the limits of the animal allegory.
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Coco
Miguel’s pursuit of music uncovers a family story that has been misremembered. Examine how songs, objects, and testimony connect identity with remembrance.
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Turning Red
Mei’s red-panda transformation makes tensions around emotion, independence, and family expectations visible. Analyze the fantasy as a metaphor while considering how boundaries and care can coexist.
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October Sky
Homer and his friends develop rockets while negotiating the expectations of a coal-mining town. Examine evidence, learning from failure, and the support needed to pursue an unfamiliar future.
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The Princess Bride
A grandfather’s reading frames a tale of love, deception, and unlikely cooperation. Examine how the film uses familiar adventure conventions while commenting on storytelling itself.
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Cool Runnings
A Jamaican bobsled team navigates unfamiliar sport, stereotypes, and conflicting ideas of success. Examine cooperation and integrity while checking the film’s inventions against the historical team.
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The Sandlot
Smalls joins a neighborhood baseball group and helps turn a local fear into a larger story of belonging. Examine mentorship, unreliable assumptions, and nostalgia’s selective view of childhood.
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Secondhand Lions
Walter hears extraordinary stories while deciding whom to trust in an unstable family situation. Examine the difference between factual certainty, ethical commitment, and the meaning of a told story.
Teacher guide · 2-page PDF · Digital worksheet
The Greatest Showman
A musical presents ambition, belonging, and the costs of seeking elite approval. Analyze the songs’ arguments while checking the film’s celebratory portrait against Barnum’s documented exploitation.
Teacher guide · 2-page PDF · Digital worksheet
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