Chak De! India

"Kabir Khan lives a middle-class lifestyle along with his widowed mom in Delhi, India, and is the Captain of the Indian men's hockey team. He fails to score at the last tournament resulting in Pakistan winning the World Cup amidst allegations that he was more inclined toward his opponents due to his religion. Kabir and his mom move away and virtually disappear for seven years. Thereafter Kabir surfaces to be a Coach for the women's hockey team, consisting of 16 players from all over India, some of who do not communicate well."
-rAjOo (www.imdb.com)

Lü cao di (Mongolian Ping Pong)

A young boy, named Bilike, finds a ping pong ball in a river near his home in the Gobi Desert. He asks a lot of people what it is but nobody knows. His grandmother tells him it's a "Glowing Pearl". He and his friends find out that it is a ping pong ball after watching the television. He and his friend both want the ball so they end up cutting it in half. At the end, he gets sent off to school in Beijing and when he goes to the bathroom he walks into a room full of ping pong players. I thought this movie was inspiring because these little kids travel through the desert and almost die to find out about this ball. Their friend goes out looking for them and finally finds them. This movie is about true friendship. In their culture, they punish their children by whacking the children's butts with rods or sticks. The children are also allowed to roam wherever they please because their neighbors and friends live miles into the desert.

"The story is a gentle art film about a Mongolian boy who discovers a ping pong ball and his journey of discovery about its origins."

-Wikipedia

"Bilike has never seen a ping-pong ball before. The mystery of the small white ball floating in the creek leads to questions about the world around them. They are excited to hear that their object is the 'national ball of China'. The determined young boys set off to return the ball to the Chinese capital."

-www.imdb.com

Flirting

In Flirting, Danny Embling is a student at a private boarding school for boys. (The boys and girls schools are separated by a lake.) Danny meets an African girl, named Thandiwe, and they fall in love. They sneak away from their schools at night to meet several times. In order to talk to her over the phone, he fakes being her dad as a sort of secret code to say it's him. In the end, Thandiwe must leave to go back to her country because her father was arrested and her stepmother was taken. She needs to go back to take care of her 2 younger siblings. She still writes letters to Danny but they eventually stop. At the end, he reads the very last letter about how she can't wait to see him again. I thought this movie was very good and I enjoyed watching it. I felt like the teachers were unnecessarily strict but also that the students may have gone too far in some of the things they did. In this school, the teachers are allowed to "beat" the students into obedience. If the students are disobedient, they just get beaten some more.

"Danny has been sent to boarding school, in this sequel to The Year My Voice Broke. Against a backdrop of bullying and sadistic teachers Danny strikes up an affair with an African girl, Thandiwe, studying at a nearby girls school. Their affair blossoms while everyone tries to stop it. Nicole Kidman also appears as a sexually repressed senior at Thandiwes' school."
-Matthew Stanfield (www.imdb.com)

"With its complex characters, low-key atmosphere, and sumptuous cinematography, the movie was widely critically acclaimed. It was featured on Roger Ebert's Top 10 Best Films List of 1992. The film won the 1990 Australian Film Institute Award for Best Film. This movie ranked number 46 on Entertainment Weekly's "50 Best High School Movies.""
-Wikipedia

The Weeping Camel

The Story of the Weeping Camel is a 2003 Mongolian documentary. It came out in 2004. The movie was written by Byambasuren Davaa and Luigi Falorni. It’s about a family of nomadic shepherds in the Gobi desert trying to save the life of a rare white colt after it was rejected by its mother. I found this video to be very inspirational. I also found it odd that the treatment actually worked and it made me wonder if maybe it was merely coincidence that the Camel decided to accept it's colt during the ritual. It was a very interesting movie and I enjoyed watching it. This is definitely a movie about keeping with something and never giving up, the way the family never gave up on the colt. They did everything they could to reunite the colt with it's mother and in the end they accomplished their goal. Congratulations, Mongolian family.

"In the spring of the Gobi Desert, in South Mongolia, a nomadic family of shepherds has troubles when one camel has a tough two days delivery, immediately rejecting the offspring. The family unsuccessfully uses their best efforts trying to force the female to accept and feed the newborn. When there is no further hope of saving the animal, they send their two sons to bring a musician from the nearest town to perform a ritual and save the colt."
- Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (www.imdb.com)

Rabbit-Proof Fence/Aborigines

Rabbit-Proof Fence is a movie about 3 little aboriginal girls who were taken from their mothers and put into a sort of concentration camp for kids. A story about their journey out the camp and the travel home. They were taken to a camp and they planned their escape to happen during the rain in order cover their tracks. They came upon lots of people who helped them with food and directions. They followed the Rabbit-Proof Fence home for 1,500 miles to their mothers. The middle child never made it home because she was captured at the train tracks. This movie really captured the aspect of discrimination due to racial features. It also portrays determination and never giving up. The children traveled incredibly far in order to get home to their mothers. They risked everything for the one thing that they desired most. Family.

"In 1931, with the Aborigine Act in Australia, the Chief Protector of Aborigines in the State of Western Australia A.O. Neville had the power to relocate half-caste children from their families to educational centers to give the culture of the white man. When the fourteen year-old aboriginal girl Molly Craig is taken from her mother in Jigalong with her eight year-old sister Daisy Kadibill and their ten year-old cousin Gracie Fields to the distant Moore River Native Center, they run away trying to return to the tribe in the desert. They are chased by the tracker, Moodoo, and the police under the command of Neville, and have to survive to their long journey back home."
- Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (www.imdb.com)

"Indigenous Australians are the original inhabitants of the Australian continent and nearby islands, and these peoples' descendants. Indigenous Australians are distinguished as either Aboriginal people or Torres Strait Islanders, who currently together make up about 2.7% of Australia's population."
- Wikipedia