"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!"
  • 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...

  • Howard Zinn: A People's History of the United States

    Directed by Olivier Azam, Daniel Mermet • Documentary • With Howard Zinn • 2016 • 100 minutes

    "As long as rabbits don't have historians, history will be written by the hunters."

    With the tremendous success of his book, A People’s History of the United States, Howard Zinn radically changed the w...

  • 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?...

  • Chicago Boys

    Directed by Carola Fuentes and Rafael Valdeavellano • Documentary • 2015 • 85 minutes

    In the middle of the Cold War, the University of Chicago gave scholarships to a group of Chilean students to study economics under the teachings of Milton Friedman. Twenty years later, during Pinochet's dictato...

  • When Banana Ruled

    Directed by Mathilde Damoisel • Documentary • 2017 • 52 minutes

    Bananas are everywhere: Americans eat nearly 10 billion of them per year, consuming more pounds of bananas than apples and oranges combined.

    WHEN BANANA RULED tells the story of the men who made bananas the most ubiquitous fruit in...

  • Discount

    Directed by Louis-Julien Petit • Drama • With Olivier Barthélémy, Corinne Masiero • 2014 • 102 minutes

    One day the checkout assistants at Discount's, the local supermarket, learn that their jobs are being threatened by the installation of automatic cash registers. If this wasn't bad enough, they...

  • 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...

  • The Corporate Coup d'État

    Directed by Fred Peabody • Documentary • With Chris Hedges, Phillip Martin, Sarah Jaffe, Matt Taibbi, Lee Fang, John Ralston Saul • 2018 • 90 minutes

    This investigative documentary exposes how corporations and billionaires have taken control of the American political process, and in doing so hav...

  • Master of the Universe

    Directed by Marc Bauder • Documentary • With Rainer Voss, Angela Merkel • 2014 • 88 minutes

    A brilliant documentary dissecting the global financial system as told by leading German investment banker Rainer Voss. A real life former master of the universe, Voss gives a disturbing insider's account...

  • Germinal

    Directed by Claude Berri • Drama • With Renaud, Gérard Depardieu, Miou-Miou • 1993 • 160 minutes

    Winner of France’s prestigious César Awards for Best Cinematography and Best Costume Design, this epic film is based on the novel by Émile Zola.

    During the Second Napoleonic Empire (the mid-19th cen...

  • 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...

  • The Society of the Spectacle

    2 items

    Six years after the publication of his Situationist classic The Society of the Spectacle, Guy Debord released this semi-experimental, essay-film adaptation. Using the classic Situationist technique of “détournement” (think pre-digital remixing), Debord overlays a dizzying array of still and film ...

  • Third Avenue: Only the Strong Survive

    Directed by Jon Alpert • Documentary • 1980 • 60 minutes

    This Emmy Award-winning documentary tells the stories of six "ordinary" people who live or work along New York City's Third Avenue, which runs for sixteen miles through Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the Bronx, cutting through the complex social...

  • As Goes Janesville

    Directed by Brad Lichtenstein • Documentary • 2012 • 87 minutes

    As Goes Janesville catapults viewers to the front lines of a national debate over the fate of the American economy and the survival of the middle class – a debate that turned into a pitched battle in the normally tranquil state of W...

  • Xmas Without China

    Directed by Alicia Dwyer • Documentary • 2013 • 63 minutes

    Exploring the intersection of consumerism and immigration in American culture, XMAS WITHOUT CHINA is an intimate portrait of families wrestling with our drive to consume cheap products, but also with our desire for human connection and a...

  • 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 ...

  • Downtown Dream

    Directed by Aaron Matthews • Documentary • 2013 • 45 minutes

    For decades, small town life in the United States has been quietly eroding. But there are overlooked stories amidst the talk of America's economic decline: the stories of individual men and women in the 'Rust Belt' community in Lewisto...

  • 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...