I watch a lot of movies. The movies I’ve been watching since about a year are mostly Hollywood classics and foreign films. Next to working my way through the remaining 65 movies I haven’t seen from this list, I currently also try to work my way through the world, so to speak.

That is, I want to watch at least one movie per country, more wherever possible. That is of course a very time-consuming hobby, but time is not the only barrier in the completion of this task. It’s very hard to find decent foreign movies. Browsing amazon.de can result in some useful finds, plus I get most of my inspiration from the Fantasy Film Fest and some from the Academy, but it’s very hard to get a hand of a lot of these movies in the first place. I rent movies from amazon.de, but in many cases they have disappointed me: Either they didn’t have the movie at all. Or they had it, but the DVD didn’t have the original language track (just a cruel German dub). Or the DVD had the original language track, but no English or German subtitles. Duh, I don’t speak Polish, dobrze?

Why exactly am I doing this to myself? I think it’s mostly about curiosity for foreign countries and foreign languages (combined with my interest for movies). Most people hardly ever get out of the country they live in, and in a country like Germany you don’t even get to hear foreign languages on the TV. When I watched my first Icelandic movie I was amazed at how beautiful that language sounds.

Another reason is the quality of those movies. A lot of foreign movies I’ve seen are a hundred times better in quality than what Hollywood is producing these days. They might not always have stunning visual effects, but they have characters to empathize with and stories to ponder about.

Now since foreign language movies are so uncommon, I’d like to introduce some of the ones I’ve seen so far. The classification of “foreign films” usually doesn’t include movies from the anglosphere, but I’m gonna include English-language movies which are not from the US or the UK as well. My quest is more about countries and not entirely about languages. Movies from Australia, New Zealand, Ireland or Scotland are pretty uncommon, don’t you think?

Argentina

La Antena La Antena / The Aerial (2007)
A very unusual movie. It’s sort of a silent movie, but completely different from the usual silent movies. It’s in black and white with strong background music and the characters communicate with “subtitles”. Those subtitles are not the usual subtitles either, but integrated into the whole composition of the film, a little bit like in a comic. If a person screams, the words might literally come out of their mouth. This visual style supports the plot of the movie; it’s about a city where the people lost their voices.

Canada

Fido Fido (2006)
Fido is a sunshiney 1950s American hillbilly movie taking place in a happy small community, very much like Pleasantville. There’s just only little weird thing about this community; people keep zombies as some sort of butler/pet. And that’s what makes this movie pretty hilarious. I know it’s not really a representative for Canada because it’s obviously sort of “American”, but it’s worth mentioning because it’s so unique.

Czech Republic

Kolja Kolja (1996)
This Oscar-winning movie set in 1988(?) is about an old cellist (also womanizer) who agrees to a bogus marriage to a Russian woman, allowing her to get a Czech visa. Unfortunately she takes off to Germany as soon as she has her visa, but leaves her little son with the old guy. He is of course very annoyed at first, but the movie gets immensely cheesier as the two grow on each other. It’s very nice and sweet, but personally I thought it was a little overrated.

France

La Reine Margot La Reine Margot (1994)
Unless you are a French history geek I can’t really recommend this movie – it’s very very tedious, though also very very gory, obviously, because it tells the story of the royal French family during the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre. I watched it merely to find out more about Vincent Perez.

Les Rivieres pourpres Les Rivières pourpres / The Crimson Rivers (2000)
It’s been way to long since I’ve seen this movie, but I’m not really keen on seeing it (or the sequel) again – in my opinion the French don’t know how to make action movies. There is something about them which I don’t understand. I always get confused with the plot and I never really get the point. I felt the same way when I recently watched L’Empire des loups (The Empire of Wolves). Both these movies built up to something supernatural, which turns out to be something not supernatural at all, and thus is disappointing. But maybe I just don’t understand them.

Amelie Le Fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain (2001)
Seems like this is the only French film I like – even love. Amelie is the cutest, both the girl and the movie. She is a little crazy, but I think everyone can relate to her.

Germany

Knockin on Heavens Door Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door (1997)
Living in Germany and all, I of course know a lot of German movies. But I’m not such a great fan of them actually, because Germans aren’t really great actors. There are very few exceptions, like this one. I wouldn’t call Til Schweiger a talented actor, but since he’s made it to be an Angelina Jolie co-star, I guess we can give him some credit. Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door is not about Guns’n’Roses as the title suggests, but about two guys with terminal cancer. Upon receiving their diagnose, they decide to escape from the hospital in order to drive to the ocean, sort of fulfilling a last wish. Sounds sad, but they have a lot of fun on their way there.

Erbsen auf halb sechs Erbsen auf halb sechs / Peas at 5:30 (2004)
Again this movie is full of wooden acting (sort of like George’s Lucas’ dialogs, but worse), but allover it’s a very very beautiful movie with even more beautiful music. A young theater director loses his eyesight in a car accident, and has trouble accepting being blind. A young girl who was born blind is send to help him, but he doesn’t really wanna be helped and runs away, so they both end up on an accidental road trip to Russia where the guy wants to visit his sick mother.

Die Fälscher Die Fälscher / The Counterfeiters (2007)
Even though this won the Oscar for Austria, it doesn’t really have much to do with Austria except for the lead actor being Austrian. And he doesn’t even play an Austrian – he plays a Russian Jew living of self-forged money, who is imprisoned in a KZ and has to help the Nazis counterfeit money. It’s one of thousands of German movies about the war. Der Untergang (Downfall) was one of the more famous ones. They are sort of equally good, but I don’t think I’d watch them again any time soon. I totally missed the release of this movie in Germany, the first time I heard about it was when it was released in the US. I only got curious about it because of the lead actor Karl Markovics. He used to play a very funny homicide inspector in my favorite TV show when I was younger.

Hong Kong

Gwai wik Gwai wik / Re-Cycle (2006)
Initially I thought I wasn’t gonna live through this creepy horror suspense. But toward the middle of the movie, the suspense lightens as we find out what’s behind it, and instead of being a creepy horror movie, this turns into a weird fantasy movie set in a parallel fantasy world. I liked the idea a lot, though some parts were really really weird. Very.

Netherlands

Zwartboek Zwartboek / Black Book (2006)
Another WWII movie among the likes of Downfall and The Counterfeiters, but this time frow the view of the Dutch. The evil Germans occupied the Netherlands (among many others), and this movie tells the story of a Jewish female undercover agent from the rebellion who gets close to the Germans in charge of the Occupation. There are actual German actors in this movie and the Dutch actors speak almost fluent German with them. All very authentic and allover a very good movie, one of the best of it’s kind.

New Zealand

Whale Rider Whale Rider (2002)
Whale Rider tells the story of a young Maori girl (Paikea) in modern-day New Zealand, who struggles to find acceptance from her grandfather, the head of the tribe. Unfortuantely her grandfather doesn’t have any male heirs, so in order to find a new head for his tribe, he trains the local boys. Paikea doesn’t understand why she can’t be head of the tribe and secretly watches her grandfather’s lessons. Again this is one of the most outstanding international movies I’ve seen so far. It’s got something everyone can relate to and it’s very beautifully made.

Norway

Den Brysomme Mannen Den brysomme mannen / The bothersome man (2006)
Andreas, a guy in his mid-thirties, is send to a town, starting a new job. It’s a very strange town. People don’t seem to care about anything, they just live on and on in a totally callous way. Even when there’s a gory body lying on the street nobody seems to care, people just walk past without even looking. Andreas begins to notice that there’s something very weird about this emotionless world, but as soon as he tries to do something about it, some higher power seems to prevent it. The film leaves a lot of room for interpretation. It’s sort of gloomy, but still very good.

Russia

Volkodav Volkodav iz roda Serykh Psov / Wolfhound (2007)
This is Russia’s answer to Lord of the Rings, with laser swords. Well not exactly, but it’s Russia’s biggest budget Fantasy movie ever. And it’s actually pretty good. Of course some things are a little unpolished and could use more depth, but allover I was suprised by how good this movie was. It gets an extra point for the cute pet bat the main character keeps.

South Africa

Tsotsi Tsotsi (2005)
Another Oscar winning movie, in my opinion overrated. It’s not a bad movie, but throughout the whole plot I asked the same question: “Why?”. The plot doesn’t make a lot of sense. It’s about a gang leader from a poor Township in South Africa, who kidnaps a baby after accidentally shooting the mother, a woman from the rich part of town. But he doesn’t wanna give it back to the parents and plays hide and seek. Why – I never found out.

And just as we are used to from the movies these days, there’ll be at least two sequels to this thing in the near future. “International Cinema II” is already in production and will include Finland, Iceland, Serbia, South Korea, Spain and Sweden. I could probably write an entire episode just about Sweden, but that’d be boring.

“International Cinema III” is still in pre-production, but will most likely include Australia, Italy and Denmark. Countries I also want to see movies from but haven’t found any yet are: Austria (non Germany productions), Switzerland, Greece, Thailand, non-Bollywood India, Poland, Romania, Middle East & Arabian countries (Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Israel, Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, Emirates), Hungary, French Canada, Middle & South America and Oceania. So if you know any good movies from any of those (or other not mentioned) countries, feel free to flood me with suggestions!