The Mental Disease of Late-Stage Capitalism
Joe Brewer · 10,752 views today · I’ve been talking with a lot of my friends recently — in private where they felt comfortable letting their guard down — about the dirty little secret no one is supposed to talk about. The shame people feel when they can’t find a job… …or pay their bills. …or go to the dentist. …or that they have to move back in...
How the World Runs on Looting the Congo
27 min · 4,103 views today · Every drone flown by the U.S. military has inside a piece of the Democratic Republic of the Congo--a valuable mineral, of which the DRC has trillions of dollars worth buried...
"Desert Goddess" Remembers Arizona's Glen Canyon
7 min · 3,225 views today · In this excerpt from the award-winning documentary DamNation, filmmakers Ben Knight and Travis Rummel interview the "desert goddess," Katie Lee. When the Glen Canyon Dam was...
New UN Report Finds Almost No Industry Profitable If Environmental Costs Were Included
Exposing The Truth · 2,543 views today · If you haven’t been paying attention, I don’t blame you for at first not believing this. After all, companies go to great lengths to greenwash their image and present...
Why Sanders Supporters Should Not Let Democratic Primary Demoralize Them
Kevin Gosztola · 2,347 views today · Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was expected to do very well in the five primaries on April 26, but after the results, Bernie Sanders and his supporters face...
The Old Paradigm’s Demoralizing Orthodoxies Make Us Confuse Despair With Realism
Arlene Goldbard · 2,088 views today · Undergraduates ask me how to keep from getting cynical and demoralized, and my first question is how much mainstream news media they consume each day.
Brené Brown on How to Reckon with Emotion and Change Your Narrative
Brené Brown · 1,386 views today · The most powerful stories may be the ones we tell ourselves, says Brené Brown. But beware—they're usually fiction.
Depression Is a Disease of Civilization: Hunter-Gatherers Hold the Key to the Cure
Sara Burrows · 1,105 views today · Depression is a global epidemic. It is the main driver behind suicide, which now claims more than a million lives per year worldwide. One in four Americans will suffer from...
10 Words Every Girl Should Learn
Soraya Chemaly · 790 views today · "Stop interrupting me."  "I just said that." "No explanation needed." In fifth grade, I won the school courtesy prize. In other words, I won an award for being polite. My...
Your Lifestyle Has Already Been Designed (The Real Reason For The Forty-Hour Workweek)
David Cain · 753 views today · Well I’m in the working world again. I’ve found myself a well-paying gig in the engineering industry, and life finally feels like it’s returning to normal after my nine months...
Today I Rise: This Beautiful Short Film Is Like a Love Poem For Your Heart and Soul
4 min · 679 views today · "The world is missing what I am ready to give: My Wisdom, My Sweetness, My Love and My hunger for Peace." "Where are you? Where are you, little girl with broken wings but full...
John Lennon's "Imagine," Made Into A Comic Strip
John Lennon. Art by Pablo Stanley · 582 views today · This is easily the best comic strip ever made.  Pabl
The Real Reason America Used Nuclear Weapons Against Japan. It Was Not To End the War Or Save Lives.
Washington's Blog · 572 views today · Atomic Weapons Were Not Needed to End the War or Save Lives Like all Americans, I was taught that the U.S. dropped nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in order to end...
9 Ways We Can Make Social Justice Movements Less Elitist and More Accessible
Kai Cheng Thom · 478 views today · In my first year of college, I stopped calling myself an activist. It took attending just a few meetings of the campus queer group for me to realize that I didn’t fit in with...
HUMAN (2015)
382 min · 435 views today · What is it that makes us human? Is it that we love, that we fight? That we laugh? Cry? Our curiosity? The quest for discovery?  Driven by these questions, filmmaker and artist...
Caitlin Moran's Posthumous Advice for Her Daughter
Caitlin Moran · 417 views today · My daughter is about to turn 13 and I’ve been smoking a lot recently, and so – in the wee small hours, when my lungs feel like there’s a small mouse inside them, scratching to...
This is the National Health Service (NHS)
3 min · 381 views today · The story of one of the most complex organisations in the world, told through the voices of those on the frontline. Part 1: The NHS Explained Part 2: A&E; confessions: a...
Rose Pere: We Believe In The Oneness of Everything That Exists
2 min · 337 views today · At her home just north of Tuai, a small town in the mountains of the North Island of Aotearoa New Zealand, Dr. Rangimarie Turuki Rose Pere shares some of the beliefs of her...
Media Concentration: It's kind of a bad thing
5 min · 293 views today · Media giant Rupert Murdoch's recent buy-out of the Wall-Street Journal is just one example in a long history of increasing media concentration in the United States, where just...
TPP, TTIP & TISA - Trade Deals to Create a New Global Legal and Economic System
11 min · 281 views today · The Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has dubbed the TTIP an "economic NATO," comparing it to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization military alliance. Over the last...
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New Member Submitted Content
6 Healthy Relationship Habits Most People Think Are Toxic
Mark Manson · About six months ago, I wrote a post titled 6 Toxic Habits that Most People Think Are Normal. It became very successful. A lot of people commented and a lot of people shared and big grown-up websites who get paid to post smart grown-up things asked me if they could copy/paste it, ostensibly to make a bunch of...
Rules for the Black Birdwatcher
2 min · An eloquent advocate for ethnic diversity in ecology and environmental studies, J Drew Lanham of Clemson University has developed a helpful set of field rules for his (very...
BHS Collapse: How Capitalism Is Eating Itself
Duncan McCann · The recent collapse of BHS, which formally went into administration this week, is in part a story about a failing company in difficult economic times – but only in part. It...
At Chernobyl and Fukushima, Radioactivity Has Seriously Harmed Wildlife
Timothy A. Mousseau · The largest nuclear disaster in history occurred 30 years ago at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in what was then the Soviet Union. The meltdown, explosions and nuclear fire...
Jabiluka: The Aboriginal Swindle (1997)
39 min · Stunning footage of a threatened land reinforces the sadness felt for what could be lost if the Jabiluka mine project destroys a World heritage site. For similar stories, see...
Emma and Sophie Thompson Cook Up a Plan to Stop Fracking
3 min · Part 1: Emma Thompson and sister Sophie have hatched a plan to take on the fracking industry. Their idea's a little mischievous, so it's all hush-hush for now. But soon all...
Jeremy Hunt - Nightmare Health Secretary
1 min · Jeremy Hunt should stop telling us how reckless and dangerous the Junior Doctors' strikes are, because trained medical professionals clearly feel his policies are far more...
Play Makes Us Human VI: Hunter-Gatherers' Playful Parenting
Peter Gray, Ph.D. · Have you ever noticed how we, as a society, use agricultural metaphors to talk about parenting and education? We speak of raising children, just as we speak of raising tomatoes...
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Popular Films
Freedom for Palestine: #GazaNames Project
3 min · Prominent Jews and Palestinians and others stand for Palestine in this heartbreaking video with Jonathan Demme, Gloria Steinem, Tony Kushner, Diana Buttu, Chuck D, Eve Ensler, Brian Eno, Roger Waters, Mira Nair, Wallace Shawn, Naomi Klein, Mira Nair, Raj Patel, Noura Eraket and many others. To learn more or take...
Palestinian Performance Poet Speaks Powerful Truth to Power: 'We Teach Life, Sir'
4 min · Rafeef Ziadah, a Canadian-Palestinian spoken word artist and activist, performs a poem in response to a journalists who asks "don't you think it would all be better if you just...
British Reporter Returns from Gaza and Gives Heartbreaking Account of What He Saw
3 min · Jon Snow (Channel 4 News anchor) recounts the scene in Gaza's al-Shifa hospital, where doctors struggle to treat adults and children wounded by Israeli attacks. 
Jews And Arabs Refuse To Be Enemies
2 min · As millions go online to share information about the Gaza conflict, a social media campaign calling for tolerance is building.
The Lottery of Birth (2013)
76 min · Do you shape the world or does it shape you? Drawing on leading thinkers from around the world, and with a torrent of mind-expanding ideas and information, THE LOTTERY OF BIRTH...
The Real Reason You're Circumcised
4 min · If you're not Jewish, and you're circumcised, you need to watch this video.
The Story of the Chinese Farmer
2 min · "The whole process of nature is a process of immense complexity and it is really impossible to tell whether something that happens in it is good or bad." A parable about life...
This Illustrated Storybook Tale about Climate Change and Societal Collapse Will Give You Chills
4 min · A poem about apocalyptic climate change and how it will affect us all - even the wealthy, whose money will be of no value if society collapses. Poem begins: "The hooves, they...

 

About Films For Action

Film offers us a powerful tool to raise awareness of important issues not covered by the mainstream news. Our goal is to provide citizens of the world with the information and perspectives essential to creating a more just, sustainable, and democratic society.

Our website has cataloged over 3000 of the best films and videos that can be watched free online, sorted into 40 subjects related to changing the world. And, since there's still so much to learn about that isn't featured in a film, we've also cataloged a fair amount of articles, too.


 



New to the site?

There are a few great ways to dive in. You can start with our (world famous??) Wall of Films, which is a fun way to browse the 400 best documentaries on the site, with the most viewed at the top.

Our list of Top 100 activist documentaries, rated by our site members, is also super quality. We also made a list of the "top 100 documentaries we can use to change the world" in 2015. 

Looking to be inspired and see more beauty in the world? Check out this visionary list of 90 films

Since our site acts as an online library, you can sort our videos by most viewed, top rated, or newest first.

You can also filter videos by topics such as foodsustainability, economics, solutions or big ideas. Check out the left-hand side of our library for other filtering options, like language and country.

We've also picked our favorite 'films for action' from 2014, 2013, 2012, and 2011.

Enjoy!

 


Join 'team transition' 

Create an account on Films For Action

and join our growing community of people who want to change the world!

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As a member of the website you can:


1. Add content to our digital social change library
 

Add Videos
(Using a link from sites
like Youtube or Vimeo)
Add Articles
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website or written by you)
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2. Rate member submissions

We encourage rating content based on its shareability (how useful it is for raising awareness)

Rate something...

5 stars if you'd shared it multiple times over time
4 stars if you'd definitely share it once
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With the community's help, we'll select the best submissions
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3. Share quick links from any site, post status updates,
and upload image memes or photos to our community stream

 

Questions? Feel free to contact us.

 



Tips for Adding Content 

 

Our general guideline is: only add the best of the best, and filter out the rest.

We want Films For Action to be a clearinghouse for the ideas, knowledge and perspectives essential to creating a more just and sustainable world.

Before posting something, use the search bar above to type the first couple words of the title for the content you want to add to make sure someone hasn't already added it.

NEW: Content can now be submitted in any language! (Simply tag your submission with the correct language when you add the content.)

 

We look for content that:

 

  • Has a long "shelf-life," containing information and ideas that will remain relevant and useful for people browsing the archives of the subject tag(s) that the content was filed under (months or ideally years later)
     
  • Cover the progress of progressive social & environmental activist movements
     
  • Is of general global interest, regardless of where the person lives
     
  • Has the potential to go viral with a large audience (5 star content)
     
  • Focus on the root problems that affect social progress and the main bottlenecks impeding change
     
  • Has been ignored, censored, misrepresented, or under-covered by the corporate media
     
  • Focus on the root solutions that will break the bottlenecks, getting right to the root problems
     
  • Cover stories of people living and building the world they want, now
     
  • Are fairly non-partisan and avoids unnecessary antagonism, divisionary rhetoric, fear-mongering, hype, etc
     
  • Expands our ability to experience universal empathy and compassion for all people and the planet, and avoids appeals that reinforce artificial divisions (including nationality, political affiliation, race, culture, religion, socio-economic status, sexual orientation, immigrant status, etc)
     
  • Do not rely on over-the-top, in-your-face emotional appeals or hyperbolic presentation to make thier points.
     
  • Offers a fresh or alternative perspective that steps outside of the established "frame" of debate
     
  • Is incredibly well made or well written - If the ideas are great but the presentation is poor, find the content in a form that makes the same points but with a more polished, engaging and entertaining presentation
     
  • Is intellectually honest
     
  • Cover issues that people can take action on
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