Non-English Language Films

[ManMachine]

So we just had the Oscars, another mutual masturbation festival for the Hollywood set.

Apart from the token 'Best Foreign Language Film' and the extremely rare win for Roberto Benigni in 1997 (well, he was playing a holocaust victim in the film he won Best Actor for), Hollywood largely ignores a world of wonderful cinema.

I would love to know what wonderful delights are out there that I may have missed. My current list of favourites includes...

Three Colours: White (my unfashionable favourite of the tricolour series) Krzysztof Kieślowski
It's Winter - Rafi Pitts
Good Bye Lenin - Wolfgang Becker
Kasaba (Small Town) - Nuri Bilge Ceylan
The Sacrifice - Andrei Tarkovsky
Kung Fu Hustle - Stephen Chow
Raise The Red Lantern - Zhang Yimou
Garage - Lenny Abrahamson
Les Rivières Pourpres - Mathieu Kassovitz
Angel A - Luc Besson
The Seventh Seal - Ingmar Bergman
Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence - Nagisa Oshima (half Japanese half English language)


What non-English favourites of yours would you recommend I see?


MM

[My imaginary friend is GOD]

Volver is good, and one of my personal favorites is Sin Noticias de Dios, also known as Don't Tempt Me. Don't Tempt Me is about an angel from heaven (Victoria Abril) and an angel from hell (Penelope Cruz) fighting over the soul of a boxer.

[Angrboda]

i haven't seen White yet. I'll likely not anytime soon, but I'll keep it in mind.


Before Christmas I was really into K-Dramas, but I haven't watched much lately; I'm not a big movie watcher.

Raise The Red Lantern and The Seventh Seal are favorites. (I've watched Seventh Seal like 20 times; sometimes I put it on when I'm reading just to listen to the language.)



I'll be back when I have the energy to assemble a presentation.

[Something completely different]

Some of these arent in a "foreign language" for me. But here are some of my non american favorite films anyway:

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[Lachrymose]

Off the top of my head:

Tale of Two Sisters
Pan's Labyrinth
Ichi the Killer
Irreversible
Diabolique
Funny Games

[Brakeman]

Jab We Met
Les Comperes
Seven Samurai

[Rev. Rye]

All right, for things like this, it's easier for me to list directors I like:
* Werner Herzog (although it's mostly his early stuff that's in German; hell, some of it (Fitzcarraldo, Aguirre, and one version of Nosferatu) was actually shot in English and dubbed in German later.
* Robert Bresson
* Guillermo del Toro
* Fritz Lang (again, mostly his early work, although, given what happened in Germany shortly after sound was introduced into film, it's very understandable that he only made four sound films in German.)
* Michael Haneke
* Elem Klimov (only one film of any particular note, Come and See, but what a film it is!)
* Luis Bunuel
* Rumanian New Wave
* Marcel Carne
* Alejandro Jodorowsky
* John Woo (One of those directors whose work dropped in quality after coming to Hollywood)

[Cyberman]

Am I allowed to nominate American films for this? A lot of the time, the dialogue has barely a tenuous connection with English at best.

[Rev. Rye]

Hellfire, if I'd have thought of that, I would have nominated "Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels," "Trainspotting," and "A Serious Man."

[Cyberman]

I have to agree with you there. There's more recognisable English in the YouTube comments section than in those films combined.