8 Must-Watch Movies for Leaders in 2020 – Inc.

This year will be a hard act to follow in terms of movies about business. Besides fascinating documentaries about Theranos and its eccentric founder Elizabeth Holmes and the Cambridge Analytica scandal, there was the big-budget action-drama about the historic competition between automakers Ford and Ferrari. 

While a highly anticipated WeWork movie and TV show are both in the works, it’s unlikely they’ll reach viewers in 2020. Even so, business movie fans will have plenty to binge watch in the New Year.

Here are eight movies every entrepreneur should see in 2020, listed in alphabetical order.

This Harvey Weinstein-inspired story follows a day in the life of a fictional entry-level assistant working for a high-powered film executive. The movie stars Julia Garner as a recent college graduate named Jane who comes face to face with some alarmingly abusive behavior at what was supposed to be her dream job. When Jane decides that enough is enough, she learns the shocking truth about her workplace. The Assistant premieres at the Sundance Film Festival in January.

A documentary about artificial intelligence, Coded Bias delves into MIT Media Lab researcher Joy Buolamwini’s discovery that facial recognition technology doesn’t see dark-skinned faces accurately. Armed with the knowledge that automated decision-making creates problems related to bias in hiring, health care, and criminal justice, Buolamwini founded the Algorithmic Justice League to advocate for more humane uses of technology. The doc follows Buolamwini on her mission to call for U.S. legislation to protect against racial bias in algorithms. Coded Bias premieres at the Sundance Film Festival in January.

Few designers in history have changed the fashion industry as much as Pierre Cardin. This documentary about the now 97-year-old Italian innovator chronicles his career beginning in the 1940s through the founding of his eponymous brand in 1950 and the creation of his futuristic designs in subsequent decades. A pioneer for making designer dresses that could be sold to the mass market, Cardin also expanded beyond clothing to other products but notably never sold his company to a large corporation. House of Cardin premiered at the 2019 Venice Film Festival but is expected to be released in 2020.

This comedy from Paramount Pictures follows two friends played by Rose Byrne and Tiffany Haddish, who start a cosmetics company but quickly find themselves in debt to the tune of half a million dollars. The co-founders find a lifeline in a cosmetics mogul played by Salma Hayek, who invests more than $1 million in their company and teaches them how to be better managers. When their new mentor begins stealing from them, however, the businesswomen have to fight back to keep their company alive. Like a Boss hits theaters on January 10, 2020.

A drama from the producer of Best Picture winner Moonlight, Minari tells the story of a Korean family that moves to rural Arkansas to start a farm. Set in the 1980s, the film presents a “charming and unexpected take on the American Dream,” according to the Sundance Film Festival. Minari premieres at Sundance in January.

Digital marketing entrepreneur Marc Schiller was a communications expert and sought-after speaker at conferences like South by Southwest when, in 2015, he suffered two strokes that left him with a language impairment called aphasia. Unable to serve as CEO of his company, Bond Strategy and Influence, Marc has focused on his recovery, which is now the subject of a documentary he produced with help from his family. The movie is expected to make the film festival rounds beginning in the spring of 2020.

This documentary attempts to address one of the main questions involved in sending people to Mars: How would humans fare living in isolation on a planet lacking almost all the resources on Earth? Red Heaven follows a team of six scientists, engineers, and space enthusiasts who lived in a dome for 365 days as part of a NASA experiment to simulate what it would be like to live on Mars. Produced by two of the filmmakers behind the 2017 documentary Bill Nye: Science Guy, the movie captures the longest space-travel simulation ever conducted on U.S. soil. Red Heaven is expected to be released in 2020.

While the name Tesla will forever be associated with Elon Musk, it belongs to the Serbian-American inventor and scientist Nikola Tesla, whose technological breakthroughs include long-distance power transmission. This drama, starring Ethan Hawke as Tesla, follows the engineer as he struggles to capitalize financially on his inventions. Though Nicholas Hoult portrayed Tesla in the 2017 drama The Current War, the pioneering physicist has never been the main subject of a Hollywood film until now. Tesla premieres at the Sundance Film Festival in January.