In Turkey, one of the major challenges that university education faces is the indifference of young people towards social issues. The aim of this article is to contribute to the practice of critical pedagogy by proposing that showing movies is an important critical teaching method with the power both to give pleasure to the students and to develop their interest in crucial social issues. To support our argument, we showed three movies to students taking Sociology and Social Psychology courses in three successive academic terms on the topics 'the death penalty', 'gender equality' and 'prejudice'. Analysing the essays which the students were asked to write on these movies, we observed growing interest and an increase in critical thinking on the issues in question. We then conducted a survey to test this change quantitatively. The results indicate that showing movies is very influential in helping students to develop an interest and critical perspective. ©2011 Taylor & Francis