Any gems I may have missed? Recommend your favourites...
(Foreign language meaning not English, for clarity, before someone starts getting clever 😉)
Some of mine:
Pan's Labyrinth (Spanish)
A Very Long Engagement (French)
Amélie (French)
Mulan (Chinese, not Disney)
My Name (series, Korean)
Squid Game, Parasite (Korean)
Stupid martials arts stuff like Raging Phoenix (Thai) and anything with Tony Jaa
SISU on the todo list but not seen yet
Other stuff I've forgotten right now...
Much prefer to watch in the original language with subtitles rather than dubbed, even though you can tell sometimes that the subtitle text is sadly lacking.
Trainspotting?
Nikita (French)
and under your 'stupid martials arts stuff' category - Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (Mandarin)
As you've got Squid Game, then I guess it's not just films you want? So therefore all the scandi noir stuff eg. The Bridge.
Intouchables (French). Might exist in a dubbed version now
Old Boy - Korean
Betty Blue - French
Delicatessen - French
Anatomy of a Fall - Just a brilliant film.
Wings of desire.
Don't worry Peter falk speaks in English.
I liked Hero (Mandarin).
Not seen it yet but Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Thai) gets a good write up
2 recent classics:
All Quiet on The Western Front (2022)
Society of the Snow (2023)
La Haine is absolutely mandatory viewing.
Also:
It's a Beautiful Life (Italian Jew finds unusual ways to deal with ze Germans)
The Lives of Others (German Stasi officer gets embroiled with the targets he is supposed to be observing)
The Bicycle Thieves (Poor Italian family facing post-war moral dilemma)
Korean:
Oldboy
Memories of a Murder
Das experiment.
I've seen lots of foreign films which I can't remember the names of, as i skip through the titles and jump to the best bits and then usually ignore the subtitles 🤔😉.
Tampopo
Eat, Drink, Man, Woman
Babette's Feast.
Micmacs is one of my favourite films, foreign or not.
Some standouts that come to mind...
Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter...and Spring (Korean)
Tetsuo: The Iron Man (Japanese)
Kwaidan (Japanese)
Any of the Akira Kurosawa samurai movies e.g. Seven Samurai, Yojimbo (Japanese)
Solaris (Russian)
Stalker (Russian)
La Planète Sauvage (French)
The Boxer's Omen (Cantonese)
Any Shaw Brothers martial arts movies directed by Lau Kar-leung or Chang Cheh.
Will have to check my film collection tonight and update.
Was Y tu mama tambien subtitled?
Good film.
Irreversible, I think that was subtitled 🤔
most of the studio ghibli output in the original language
Diva
Sisu - watched it a week or so ago, there isn’t a lot of dialogue in it, really, but a lot of people dying in spectacularly violent ways! 🤪
Taxi
District 13
Oldboy
Plus Lady Vengeance, Sympathy For My Vengeance and Decision To Leave(all Park Chan-wook)
Squid Game
If you liked Squid Game, you might also like Alice In Borderland. If we're straying into series too, I'll recommend Hellbound.
Someone has already recommended City of God and if you haven’t seen it absolutely do, it’s very well done and the actors in it were recruited from where the film is set as in they were locals and not professional actors which gives it a real edge.
I’ve most recently seen an old Japanese film Sansho the Bailiff which you might like if you want a feudal era film that is not directly about the samurai.
Turtles are surprisingly fast swimmers(Japanese)
Welcome to Dongmagkol Korean)
Both favourites of mine
Just remembered Ai no Corrida (in the Realm of the Senses).
Bfi online is a treasure trove of foreign stuff, and English too, all for 5.99 a month!
Les Intouchables is an amazing film (French), and Omar Sy is amazing in it. Dont watch the american remake (The Upside) - it's not too bad, but nothing like as good as the original.
Relatos salvajes is also really good - a series of short tales with twists. (Argetinian Spanish)
Lilya 4-ever is also very good, but hard watching due to the subject matter (human trafficking of children). Russian
La Balance - classic French cop film
Mesrine - two film series more French crime capers
Delicatessen, really unusual French black comedy I saw in the 90's, which is probably worth a revisit.
Delicatessen is brilliant.
How about Pedro Almodovar's crazy films such as High Heels and Women on the Edge of a Nervous Breakdown?
Kurosawa +1 (and Crouching Tiger…).
I do love una película de Pedro: Delor y gloria, Volver, Mujeres al borde de un ataquen de Nervios, Julieta y A Ta Me! Spanish in case you missed that part. I’m a big fan. Penelope Cruz, Antonio Banderas and Lola Dueñas all help (obviously!). Pain & Glory I think is his strongest (and for a nano second I found myself thinking, hey maybe I should try heroin…😂) but I think my favourite would be Volver (I can’t even begin to summarise the plot but volver means to return, in this case, from the dead 😬).
House of Flying Daggers (martial arts in a sumptuous feast for the eyes, and not just Ziyi Zhang, the fight scenes in the bamboo and snow, the dance in brothel, amazing).
In The Mood For Love and the follow up 2046. Some the dresses the actresses were sewn into (and couldn’t eat whilst so!). Starring Tony Leung, Maggie Cheung and Ziyi Zhang (again!). Plus Yumeji’s Theme… 😍
Linda Linda Linda (on Youtube) about Japanese school girls practicing for a concert (Bae Doo-na being the Korean exchange student singer). Culminating a brilliant rendition of Linda Linda (the Bluehearts song)
Recent enjoyed Return To Seoul (but don’t think I could watch it again anytime soon…)
How about Pedro Almodovar’s crazy films such as… Women on the Edge of a Nervous Breakdown?
Damn, beaten to it!
Jean De Florette for the simple reason it was the first film that introduced me to French. And Emmanuelle Béart.
Lucia y el sexo by Julio Medem. Picked it up when I was living my best life as a student in Spain in the early 2000s. Decent enough film and the Spanish is easy to follow.
Mar Adentro by Amenebar.
EDIT: El Mariachi! Great shout Frogstomp! 😁
El Mariachi
Battle Royale
Infernal Affairs
Man bites dog
Oldboy
I Saw the Devil
Train to Busan
Hard boiled
The Host
The Witch - The Subversion
Rec
El Bar
Raw
Audition
Troll Hunter
Sorry most of these are horror.
Godzilla Minus One (Japanese)
saw it yesterday- best Godzilla film by. Long way IMO
woody
Jean De Florette
Oh yes that. Also La Gloire de mon Père and Le Château de ma Mère.
Another recommendation for City of God
The three colours trilogy.
Some German films you may or may not wish to consider (My wife was a big Art House film fan in Germany)
Fritz Lang: Metropolis (silent sci fi movie with German text so not sure it fits your bill!)
If you like dark and disturbing stuff try Michael Hanniker....<br />e.g.<br />Funny Games<br />Cache<br />Bennys Video
Good eastern German drama<br />Das Leben des anderen
Das Himmel ueber Berlin by Wim Wenders<br /><br />Kaspar Hauser
Das Boot
Non German films to consider?
Un Chien Andalou (The Andalusian Dog) Bunuel<br />Jamon Jamon
Look for films in Finnish by Aki Kaurismäki
A couple more
Die Blechtrommel
Black Cat White Cat (if you can find the original Eastern European version!)
The Leningrad Cowboys Go America (see Ari Kaurismäki above)
Memories of a Murder
Was going to suggest that.
Time Crimes (Spanish) - as title, quite low budget, slow burner, but very good. Trailer gives it away.
The Platform
Cell 211
Some French faves of mine
Titane
Raw (already mentioned, but is fab)
Blue is The Warmest Colour
Italian:
Suburra
Japanese:
Shoplifters
Who am I? - german, computer whizz, subversive hacker group, world stage.
Another Bigas Lunas - "the Tit and the Moon", title mildly mis-translated from the Spanish to protect our English prudishness.
Belle de Jour
Bicycle Thieves
City of God
Blue Collar (American English)
Shooters (Scouse English and it's on YT)
Came to recommend Time Crimes but sirromj already did. I picked it totally at random on netflix and thoroughly enjoyed it.
La vaquilla
Spanish civil war film about one side trying to steal the other side's bull.
Better than it sounds!
The Guilty (Danish - Den skyldige) (not the Jake Gyllenhall version)
One-man show, claustrophobically confined to a single location – a drab office where deskbound cop Asger (Jakob Cedergren) responds to an emergency call.
Kamera o Tomeru na! (One cut of the dead). Low budget Japanese meta zombie comedy cult classic. Needs watching to end, as IMO it gets better after first part.
First haf of Lion (all great but, only first half not in English).
Fellini's Otto e Mezzo (8 1/2) ? Iconic 60's Italian style.
Revenge, Austrian film.
Return of Martin Guerre, French, based on true story. School leaver French will see you through.
Wer früher stirb ist länger Tod, Bavarian Film. Nice scenery.
El secreto de sus ojos - Spamish
Dersu Uzala.
The only Kurosawa film which wasn't in Japanese.
It's evocative of a different time, hauntingly beautiful, slow but perfectly pitched.
Languages are Russian, Chinese and a
sino-russian pidgin amalgam.
Another by Kurosawa - Ran.
El Mariachi
Le Dîner de Cons
Parasite
Cinema Paradiso
Wild Tales - 6 Short Argentinian films
La piel que habito (The skin I live in) by Almodovar.
In spanish- stating the obvious.
Foreign film without language - Battleship Potemkin.
Memories of murder (Korean)
Kurosawa as mentioned earlier, but particularly Throne of Blood - the best Macbeth film ever.
I think someone mentioned ‘Crouching Tiger…’, House of Flying Daggers is also good. The story is a bit meh, but it looks amazing (and it has Zhang Ziyi in it, which makes any film worth watching).
Cyrano de Bergerac
Breathless
Jules et Jim
Loads of Shaw brothers films (if you like that kind of thing).
Life is Beautiful
Already mentioned:
City of God
Pans Labyrinth
I liked:
Holy Motors (French)
The Raid (Korean)
Not watched yet:
Rojo (Argentinian)
The Innocents (Norwegian)
I thought the Swedish version of the girl with the dragon tattoo was way better than the Hollywood attempt but from what I remember that wasn't hard.
The Story of the Weeping Camel
Best of Youth
+1 for The Lives of Others
Time of the gypsies.
The Educators (Die Fetten Jahre sind Forbei)
Le Prénom
Heavy Trip ( https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7220754/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1) - Finnish comedy in a way that is incredibly well done. I think it would have become a completely different film if it had been made in any other country. Anyway, well worth a watch.
Les Bronzes Font Du Ski ( https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078907/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1) - Late '70 French comedy.
Att Angöra en Brygga ( https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058926/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk) - 60's Swedish comedy. Why not?
Time of the gypsies.
Respect to you - this is a masterpiece - Probably saw it 20 times when i was young.
"The skin I live in" just fabulous on all counts
^^^
That one's not my favourite, but came here to say all Amodovar, just work your way through. Lots of fun stuff alongside the heavier.
Otherwise where do you start with the Euro auteurs? Fasbinder? Godard? Fellini? Etc.
The Lives of Others. A truly wonderful, tragic piece of filmmaking.
I'll second that. Also, really good interiors.
A last one as no one's mentioned Malle: "Auvoir les enfants" has stuck in my memory. An easy watch. Doomed boyhood friendship in a wartime boarding school. Good woods.
Jean De Florette for the simple reason it was the first film that introduced me to French. And Emmanuelle Béart.
Oh yes. Fond memories of being shown Jean de Florette and Manon des Source in French lessons at school as an end of term treat aged ~14!
+1 for the Lives of Others. Been a while since I watched that.
Goodbye Lenin (German) about the fall of the Berlin wall. Light hearted and very funny.
The Intouchables (French). Since been remade but the French version in so much better.
Together (Swedish) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Together_(2000_film)
Untouchable (French)
Taxi (French)
Les Petits Mouchoirs (French)
Plenty to work through here...
Forgot about Alice in Borderland, that was good.
Also City of Lost Children (French) by the same director as Amélie and Delicatessen. Weird but good.
I recently found out there's a book of Pan's Labyrinth, basically the story of the film but with added dark fairy tales. By Guillermo Del Toro and Cornelia Funke. Must get hold of this...
