What are the best foreign movies you've seen?

[buddha_david]

Run Lola Run

[Hazle_Weatherfield]

Yes, Run Lola Run and Pan’s Labyrinth. I forgot to mention Life is Beautiful.

[polar_bear]

Festen
Fucking Amal
4 months, 3 weeks, 2 days (not for date night)
The edukators

[salinqmind]

The Scarlet Empress, a 1934 movie about Catherine the Great, starring Marlene Dietrich. Directed by Josef von Sternberg. It is extraordinary. The set designs are not of this earth - bizarre, awesome!

[AuntiePam]

These are old, so sorry, but two of my favorites feature amazing child actors dealing with loss – Ponette and Forbidden Games. Another favorite is The Wages of Fear. There’s a sequence with explosives being transported in a truck – knuckle biter, that was.

Another del Toro – The Devil’s Backbone, a ghost story set during the Spanish Civil War.

Ditto on Cinema Paradiso, The Bicycle Thief, Amelie.

Oh, and A Very Long Engagement, a twisty story set during and after WWI.

[gracer]

For the category very recent (because otherwise I’d just keep writing) I nominate:

No - about the ad campaign to defeat Pinochet in the 1988 referendum. Shot to seamlessly fit with the real footage of the time, which works beautifully. Refreshing in that it is not about the shining heros who defeat Pinochet, but about real people in the real world of advertising.

Nairobi Half Life - about a young Kenyan who wants to become an actor in the big city. A film that constantly surprises you in tone.

And not-so-recent, but needs a mention for my Dutch roots & because I love this film: Antonia - about a Dutch matriarch and her family. 1995 Oscar win for best foreign language film.

[Son_of_a_Rich]

Headhunters. Oh, the lengths the hero will go to to escape his pursuer. Fun movie.

[Dick_Dastardly]

@Equipoise

See if you can find Max Manus, I’d bet you’ll like it. It’s not a documentary, but it’s “The true story about one of the most brilliant saboteurs during World War II.” Here’s a slightly longer synopsis with no major spoilers, unless you like going into a movie with bare bones knowledge.

After fighting the communists in Finland, Max Manus returns to Norway, currently occupied by the Nazis. He joins with the Norwegian resistance movement in their fight against the Germans…

Have you seen Bullhead from Belgium? It was an Oscar nominee last year but lost to A Separation. I liked A Separation, but Bullhead hit me harder. It stars Matthias Schoenaerts in an extremely brave performance that will stay with you forever. Like many movies, I’d suggest going into it knowing as little as possible. After reading Rollo’s post, I realized that Schoenaerts stars with Marion Cotillard in Rust and Bone (which I haven’t seen) by A Prophet’s director Jacques Audiard.

So many great movies have already been mentioned. I’ll have to go through my Twitter list to cull out titles. I’ve seen so many in the past couple+ years, especially at the month-long European Union Film Festival that happens every March at the Gene Siskel Film Center. I saw dozens that unfortunately never got a US release so you probably wouldn’t be able to find them.

I’ve seen Bullhead. It’s definitely a powerful film but after I watched it I remember thinking I wished I hadn’t bothered. A bit disturbing really but no doubt a powerful movie. Will have a look for Max Manus.

[Dick_Dastardly]

@Equipoise

Unfortunately it wasn’t even nominated. I certainly thought it would be. It’s a good movie, as well as a crowd-pleaser that should have been a hit. It’s a great example, one of many, of the massive disconnect between the US and the rest of the world. There was a time when this movie might have been a crossover hit, but nowadays, forget it. It was treated specifically as a “foreign-language” film, and foreign-language films are treated as “art house” films, and it withered away in the art house ghetto, where other great and crowd-pleasing movies go to die.

Though, as an art house film, it did pretty well for itself. In the US it made $10,198,820, which is considered big bucks.

In the rest of the world it made $416,389,690.

It could have made more money than that in the US if it had been given a marketing campaign by a big distributor. Although they know a little more about what sells than I do and the movie was hardly a secret. It’s weird that a movie that good can’t find a market in the US.

[Dick_Dastardly]

@madsircool

Peace be upon them?

Really?

These folks were nothing but a bunch of delusional murderous terrorists. They werent afraid to kidnap and murder to further their crazy political agenda.

At the time the US was busy killing two or three million people in Vietnam and dumping hundreds of thousands of tons of chemical wepons in the country to kill future generations and the West German government was full of old Nazis. There was plenty to get angry about and in terms of murdering people they were rank amateurs compared to certain countries.

[LawMonkey]

Since Delicatessen, City of Lost Children, and ***Amelie ***have already all been mentioned, I’ll round things out with MICMACS, another Jeunet film with all of the usual whimsical and odd stuff that those of us who love Jeunet love about Jeunet. Closer to ***Amelie ***than the earlier works in mood; it seems like Caro was responsible for the darkness and Jeunet was responsible for the whimsy.

Night Watch and its sequel, Day Watch, are both excellent Russian fantasy-action blockbusters. Basically, there are supernatural beings in the world–shapeshifters, vampires, werewolves, seers, witches and other magicians, and so on. There are Light Others and Dark Others; for the sake of simplicity here, we’ll call them good and evil, though things are not that black and white (particularly in the books the films are based on). Long ago, they realized that they would destroy the world, so they had a truce and agreed to a treaty, under which each side would monitor the other–Light Others would form the Night Watch to police Dark Others; Dark Others would form the Day Watch to police Light Others. But there’s constant scheming and manipulating going on to try to get an advantage.

Anyway, they’re good movies.

[Dick_Dastardly]

@Boyo_Jim

Some others that have popped into my head:

In Bruges – fantastic black comedy.

Beaneath Hill 60 – very good WWI film. Gallipoli – great WWI film.

Breaker Morant – great Boer War movie.

How could I have forgotten The Road Warrior and Mad Max?

The Architecture of Doom – very interesting film about Nazi architecture and “high culture”.

Hail hail. Thanks for these two posts. I’ve got one of these movies to watch and I’ve seen a couple more already but will try and find the rest.

[Dick_Dastardly]

Thanks to everybody who posted. I’ll be trying to get as many of these movies as possible this weekend.

I knew this would be a good place to ask this question.

[edwards_beard]

Space Battleship Yamato (the 2010 live action version) - Live Action movie of the classic anime Yamato series (a.k.a. Star Blazers in the US)

[madsircool]

@Dick_Dastardly

At the time the US was busy killing two or three million people in Vietnam and dumping hundreds of thousands of tons of chemical wepons in the country to kill future generations and the West German government was full of old Nazis. There was plenty to get angry about and in terms of murdering people they were rank amateurs compared to certain countries.

You would be incorrect about the timeframe..the USA had left Vietnam long before most of this groups history…and what the USA has to do with a West German terror group escapes me.

These killers murdered many innocents who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Not to say that the government officials and business people targeted deserved to be killed in the first place.

Your weak rationalization of mass murder kinda puts you in the same camp as those ‘old nazis’; your grievances excuse the commission of the worst crime there is…murder.

[OldnCrinkly]

El Mariachi. Loved it.

[si_blakely]

Tsotsi - a South African film.

[An_Gadai]

@si_blakely

Tsotsi - a South African film.

I watched that a while ago and found it dull as dishwater, very disappointing.

[gigi]

If you mean foreign as non-US and not foreign language/non-English, then include Whale Rider.

Also seconding Raise the Red Lantern.

[Accidental_Martyr]

A few German films:
Wings of Desire
Aguirre, The Wrath of God
Fitzcarraldo