What happens when people challenge those in power? In this week’s Culture Vulture, Counter Culture picks seven films, documentaries and radio programmes that ask who gets heard, who gets believed and what it takes to fight back. Mike Leigh’s Peterloo takes us to Manchester in 1819, where thousands gathered to demand parliamentary reform. For Pity’s Sake tells the story of disabled campaigners who fought for equal rights, while Dr Skin investigates medical experiments carried out on prisoners at Philadelphia’s Holmesburg Prison. When a Witness Recants follows the case of three Baltimore teenagers who were wrongfully convicted. Surviving the London Nail Bombings revisits the far-right attacks on Brixton, Brick Lane and Soho in 1999 through the experiences of those who lived through them.
We also feature Chiselled, which reckons with Eric Gill’s artistic reputation and his abuse of his family, and Unreported World’s China’s Weight-Loss Camps, which looks at military-style exercise regimes and the pressure to change your body. Culture Vulture | 14–20 November 2026 | Counter Culture
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