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What’s on TV Saturday: Oscar-Nominated Movies and ‘Notes From the Field’

Willem Dafoe and Brooklynn Prince in “The Florida Project.”Credit...A24

Stream Oscar-nominated titles before the Academy Awards air next Sunday, or explore the country’s prison problem with “Notes From the Field.”

THE FLORIDA PROJECT (2017) on iTunes and Amazon. Inspired by news reports about families living in cheap motels after the Great Recession, this drama by Sean Baker follows a mother-daughter relationship over the course of a summer in Central Florida. Six-year-old Moonee (Brooklynn Prince) is as carefree as a child should be, capering about the Magic Castle motel with her partners in crime Scooty (Christopher Rivera) and Jancey (Valeria Cotto), while her rebellious mother, Halley (Bria Vinaite), can barely make ends meet. Willem Dafoe assumes the role of responsible guardian as the admirable motel manager, which earned him a nomination for best supporting actor. “This movie insists on meeting people on both sides of the screen where they are, on suspending judgment and extending compassion without abandoning its ethical grounding,” A. O. Scott wrote in The New York Times.

LAST MEN IN ALEPPO (2017) on iTunes and Netflix. Hollywood celebrated the volunteers of Syria Civil Defense, also known as the White Helmets, last year by awarding Orlando von Einsiedel an Oscar for his 2015 short “The White Helmets.” The search-and-rescue team is back in the Academy spotlight with this documentary by the Syrian director Feras Fayyad. He spent nearly two years following the emergency rescue workers as they raced to the scenes of airstrikes in search of survivors. “It kills something inside you,” Mr. Fayyad told The Times. “We made a film about our nightmare.”

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Terry Notary in “The Square.”Credit...Magnolia Pictures

THE SQUARE (2017) on iTunes and Amazon. The protagonist of this Oscar nominee for best foreign language film is a sleek curator (Claes Bang) at a modern Stockholm museum who’s preparing for a coming exhibition on morality and trust. He has faith in the artwork, titled “The Square,” yet his behavior outside the museum contradicts the ideals “The Square” champions. There’s more to the feature’s meandering plot, and it’s worth watching for the surprise factor, wry dialogue and provocative scenes. The film practices “an aesthetics of shaming, laying bare the hypocrisy, the selfishness and the wishful thinking embedded in the deep structures of 21st-century metropolitan existence,” A. O. Scott wrote in The Times.

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Anna Deavere Smith in “Notes From the Field.”Credit...HBO

NOTES FROM THE FIELD (2018) 8 p.m. on HBO; also on HBO streaming services. The playwright and actress Anna Deavere Smith portrayed 18 real-life characters in her 2016 one-woman show, “Notes From the Field.” Each of the subjects has played a role in the fight for underprivileged American youth who fall victim to institutional racism and mass incarceration. This film adaptation weaves Ms. Smith’s electrifying performance with sobering video footage and photographs.

PYEONGCHANG 2018 OLYMPICS 7 p.m. on NBC. Watch the gold medal match for women’s curling before the Winter Games wrap up tomorrow. Canada has long dominated the sport, but, for the first time in Olympic history, the women’s team didn’t even reach the semifinals.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section C, Page 8 of the New York edition with the headline: What’s On Saturday. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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