Born Free

Born into Brothels, by Ross Kauffman and Zana Briski, is the winner of the 77th annual Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. A tribute to the resiliency of childhood and the restorative power of art, Born into Brothels is a portrait of several unforgettable children who live in the red light district of Calcutta, where their mothers work as prostitutes. Zana Briski, a New York-based photographer, gives each of the children a camera and teaches them to look at the world with new eyes.

Autumn Born would have been long forgotten had it not been for its star. Playboy model Dorothy Stratten plays a young innocent who withstands the cruelties and sexual assaults of her nasty guardian. In one scene, she is handcuffed to a bed, and the camera stays fixed on her for what seems like forever as she struggles to break free. It's that kind of film. Prior to her ill-fated attempt to escape from her own real-life nasty guardian, Paul Snider, Stratten realized that this was the sort of fare she would have spent her life making if she stayed married to him.

Nés en 68 / Born in 68 - by Olivier Ducastel, Jacques Martineau (2008)

A group of revolutionary students experiences rebellion, enlightenment, and change while establishing a commune devoted to free love, anarchy, and nudism, only to see their children eventually engage in a similarly styled rebellion 20 years later. The year was 1968: Catherine, Yves, and Hervé were 20 years old, and the revolt in May had turned their lives upside down.