The best non-American movies by country
May 29 '05 (Updated Aug 07 '09)
The Bottom Line See 'em all! And the collected works of Eisenstein, Kurosawa, and Melville, too...
With write-off mania seemingly in full flower, I decided to start a challenging (and exotic?) writeoff of best foreign films country-by-country rather than rank-ordered. I invite anyone who wants to participate to list best (and/or) favorite "foreign" movies for countries from which you have seen enough movies to make a judgment. So far the only one to take up the challenge are metalluk and aeoluscmc.
No one has seen everything, and although I estimate that I have seen between eight and nine thousand movies, I don't doubt that I could reel off a list of at least a thousand that I'd really like to see. Being directed at what one has missed is a benefit of the "best of" list-making exercise—as long as the corrections are politely delivered, anyway. And the exercise reminded me of large (terrestrial) parts of the globe from which I've not seen any movies.
If you're going to play, you should not look at my list until you've done your own (though this is not intended to be the first one that comes to mind as in romansuave's writeoff that inspired it by way of Jiahong's adding the constraint of the movies not being an American.
(Like most human categories, the boundaries of what is an "American movie" are fuzzy. Does it include major studio productions shot in Canada? Is "The Last Emperor," shot in China by an Italian director an "American movie"? If not, should it be considered a "Chinese movie"? Etc.)
My list:
Argentine: Best: "The Official Story" (directed by Luis Puenzo).
Favorite: "The Motorcycle Diaries" (directed by Brazilian Walter Salles, 2004, and arguably a Chilean movie) beat out "Happy Together" (in Cantonese, directed by Wong Kar-Wai). I haven't seen Alejandro Doria's "Esperando la carroza" (1985). As I already said "an ____ian movie" is often not obvious for sorting. The next two entries further illustrate this.
Armenian: The Color of Pomegranates, Sergei Paradjanov (1968) non-narrative movie about how Armenia (and Georgia?) may have looked to the 18th-century Armenian (Christian) poet/troubadour Haroutiun Sayakian, known as Sayat Nova ("the king of songs." It is visually extraordinary (like Paradjanov's celebration of Ukrainian pre-Soviet society in "Shadows of Our Forgotten Ancestors") and very frustrating to anyone who wants a plot or character development or explanations of exotic customs. (This is probably the most alien—in the sense of opaque to me—film on my list, and I was tempted to substitue one of Armenian-Canadian director Atom Egoyan's films, either "Ararat" or Calendar.)
Australian (English-language): If Baz Lurhman's "Moulin Rouge" doesn't count, then his "Strictly Ballroom" (for best and favorite).
Azberjani: Sergei Paradjanov (1988) Ashugi Qaribi (Ashik Kerib, also known as "The Lovelorn Minstrel") portrays another troubador (as in Paradjanov's Armenian-language "The Color of Pomegranates." It has more plot than "Color," but plot was not a major concern of Sergei Paradjanov in any language.
Belgian (French-language): The only movie I've seen that I'm aware of being Belgian is "Ma vie en rose" (1997, directed by Alain Berliner), which was mildly amusing. The Oscar for the Serbian/Bosnian war black comedy No Man's Land was credited to Belgium. If that counts, it can be the best and my favorite. I certainly wouldn't want to choose whether it is Serbian or Bosnian!
Bengali: Satrayjit Ray's (1954-59) Apu trilogy (Pather Panchali, Aparajito, The World of Apu), followed by other Ray movie. On my universal ten-best list, so all I'll say again is "Wow!".
Bhutanese: In Tibetan, Australian in financing, and less than explicit in where it is set (I think Nepal), still "Phörpa" ("The Cup", 1999, written and directed by Khyentse Norbu) is a delight to include with its passionate soccer fans among the young monks as at a Tibetan Buddhist monastery (somewhere in the diaspora). The director was born in Bhutan, and also went on to make the very interesting Travelers and Magicians (2003).
Brazilian: The most memorable is "Black Orpheus" (and my memory has had to last a long time), directed by Marcel Camus. "Central Station" (Central do Brasil, 1998, directed by Walter Salles, who also directed "The Motorcycle Diaries") eclipsed "Doña Flor and Her Two Husbands" as my favorite. As the cranky old lady who earns her living writing letters for illiterates in the main train station of Rio, Fernanda Montenegro was unforgettable, as was the 9-year-old Josue (Vinicius de Oliveira). I was very impressed by "Cidade de Deus" (City of God, directed by Fernando Meirelles and Katia Lund, 2002), but it is way too chilling to be enjoyable (the tv series "Cidade dos Homens" (City of Men, 2002-05) is less grim.
British/English: I'm not entirely sure that David Lean's epic "Lawrence of Arabia" counts as "English." The alternate "best" (shot in Vienna by Carol Reed) is "The Third Man," and that or The Importance of Being Earnest (more for its source material perfectly delivered than for any cinematic merit) or "My Beautiful Laundrette" as my favorite (and sigh that Omar Wannecke did not go on to have much of a career, unlike Daniel Day-Lewis who threw his away) is my favorite.
Burkina Faso: (in in Dioula) I haven't seen the 2004 movie "La Nuit de la vérité (Night of Truth 2004), directed by Fanta Rêgina Nacro, but was favorably impressed by nacro's first movie "Un certain matin " (A Certain Morning”, 1991) once upon a time (at the San Francisco International Film Festival). Neither is available on DVD or VHS, alas.
Canadian: I don't understand the accolades for the tedious movies of Denys Arcand's "Barbarian Invasions" and earlier "Decline of the American Empire," both nominated for best foreign-language film Oscars. His 1989 "Jésus de Montréal" (Jesus of Montreal), however is very impressive. My favorite is also about an extremely committed artist: Francois Girard's 1993 "Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould." The best is probably Atom Egoyan's heartbreaking 1997 "The Sweet Herafter" with an awe-inspiring central performance by Ian Holm, but what a downer that is!
Chinese (Cantonese): My favorite is Painted Faces" (Qi qiao fu, directed by Alex Law, 1988), followed by Jackie Chan grown up (sort of) in "Project A, Part II" ('A' gai waak juk jaap. 1987, directed by Chan). My favorite fight scene is the lion dancers near the start of "Drunken Master" (Jui kuen,1978, directed by Yuen Wooping). Among the best are John Woo's "The Killer" (Die xue shuang xiong,1989) and Wong Kar-Wai's Chunking Express.
Chinese (Mandarin): My current favorite is The House of Flying Daggers, directed by Zhang Yimou. Either his earlier (1991) cross-Chinese-history tragedy "Raise the Red Lantern" or Chen Kaige's (1993) "Farewell, My Concubine" may be the best, though for cinematography nothing I know in any language surpasses "The House of Flying Daggers."
Colombian (Spanish-language): "La Virgen de los sicarios" Our Lady of the Assassins (2000) is a haunting movie about gangster-overwhelmed Medellin and a very offbeat romance between a "civilized" man and desolate angels. It was directed by Barbet Schroeder, who was born in Teheran and has directed movies in English (Reversal of Fortune) and French (Maitresse), and the documentary "Idi Amin Dada."
Croatian: "Ovce od gipsa" ("Witnesses "in English, 2003), written and directed by Vinko Bresnan.
Cuban (Spanish-language): "Lucía" (1969, directed by Humberto Solís) is the sort of historical swath across history Zhang Yimou used to make before he went wuxia (and CGI). I was very impressed when I saw it, but have not heard of it being shown or available in recent years. "Memories of an Underdevelopment" (Memorias del subdesarrollo, 1968, directed by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea) is also very good. Color me tepid about "Strawberries and Chocolate( Fresa y chocolate (1994, also (co-)directed by Gutiêrrez Alea, but admiring of Julian Schnabel's adaptation of Arenas's Before Night Falls.
Czech: I love "Larks on a String" (Skrivánci na niti (made in 1968, withheld from release until 1990, directed by Jirí Menzel, more famous for having directed "Closely Watched Trains"), which is certainly a very good film. (And based on a novel by Bohumil Hrabal, author of the wonderful I Served the King of England. (Forget Milos Forman!)
Danish: The one world-class Danish director is Carl-Theodore Dreyer. I'd really like to choose his "The Passion of Joan of Arc" in this category. It's silent, but surely it's a "French film." Not only is Day of Wrath (Vredens dag, 1943) not my favorite Danish film, I don't even like it. It is the first movie that I rated 5-stars and checked "do not recommend to friends." It is a great movie but repellent in latter-day complicity with witch-torture and execution (in contrast, there is no sense from "The Passion of Joan of Arc" that Dreyer thought she got what she deserved). Dreyer also directed the incredibly irritating but undeniably great "Gertrud" (1964). (I've steered clear of "Ordet." Maybe some time when I'm feeling very masochistic...) For favorite Danish movie, the conventional choice is a welcome relief from Dreyer: Babette's Feat (Babettes gästebud, 1987, directed by Gabriel Axel from a novella by the Danish baroness who wrote as Isaak Dinesen), not having seen "Festen" (1998, written and directed by Thomas Vinterberg) or "Bab el shams" (2004, directed by Yousry Nasrallah) or "Pelle the Conqueror" (1988, directed by Bille August). I'm not a Dogme fan, though I thought that Icelandic pop singer Björk was amazing in "Dancing in the Dark" (2000, directed by Lars von Trier).
Documentary: Tokyo Olympiad has a lot of drama as put together by the master director Kon Ichikawa (Fire on the Plains, Harp of Burma, etc.)
Dutch: "Karakter" (1997, directed by Mike van Diem). How did an Oscar-winner get on my list? Well, that's practically the only way a Dutch movie [or Argentinian] movie gets shown in the US? And that shows that it could win in a category more competitive than my favorite Dutch movie! It really is excellent. But why hasn't van Diem made another movie since its success?
Filipino: "Macho Dancer" (1988, directed by Lino Brocka) is the only one I remember. It is aesthetically and politically questionable, so I sought outside counsel and took the suggestion of "Manila by Night" (1980, directed by Ishmael Bernal) also known as "City After Dark." It is unavailable on VHS or DVD, alas. And Ricardo Ramos champions "The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveras" (Aureas Solito, 2005
French: Jean-Pierre Melville's "Le Samourai" with Alain Delon as a cat-loving hit man is my favorite and I could argue is the best. (I also like Melville's movie of Jean Cocteau's Les enfants terribles a lot, and Melville's Le Cercle Rouge also starring Delon, and, while I'm at it, Georges Franju's movie of Cocteau's Thomas, l'imposteur and Cocteau's own "La belle et le bête" and "Orphée" The best is widely supposed to be Jean Renoir's "La Règle du jeu" (which I always think should be plural). I prefer the Marcel Carné/Jacques Prévert "Les enfants du Paradis," even though it is overlong. I'll instead go with the intense "Un condamné à mort s'est échappé" (A Condemned Man Escapes, 1956, directed by Robert Bresson, whose "Pickpocket" is another minimalist masterpiece).
Georgian: "The Legend of the Suram Fortress"/Ambavi Suramis tsikhitsa (1984) directed by Sergei Paradjanov, whose "Ashik Kerib) was also partly in Georgian. "Legend" was the first movie Paradjanov was allowed to direct after 16 years that included more than four in Soviet prison. Like his other movies starting with "Shadows of Our Forgotten Ancestors," it celebrates re-Soviet, non-Russian cultures/societies.
German: Fritz Lang's "M" is one of the most influential movies in film history, and he produced a large body of striking films—silent, German, French, and American ones (see, and, better still, join my Lang writeoff). My favorite German film not in German (but with the wondrous Marianne Sagebrecht) is Bagdad Cafe, directed by Percy Adlon. Werner Herzog's Fitzcaraldo is in German and I like it better than the more imposing ("greater")"Aguirre: the Wrath of God." (Both of which might be classified as "Peruvian films," and then Herzog's mostly ignored Cobra Verde with Klaus Kinski going crazy in another tropical locaiton can be Beininian...)
Greek: "Zorba, The Greek" had a Greek director (Michael Cacoyannis, actually Cypriote by birth; he also directed "The Trojan Women" in English) and a great Greek actress (Irene Pappas) and was filmed on Crete with the Ethnic for All Seasons Anthony Quinn in the lead role. If that doesn't count as a "Greek movie," my second choice "Phaedra" (directed by blacklisted American expatriate Jules Dassin, starring his wife, later Greek Minister of Culture, Melina Mercouri in the title role and Anthony Perkins as a modern-day Hippolytus. It's also English-language, but the category is "best foreign films" not "best foreign-language films", no? (And would someone release the last Dassin/Mercouri movie, "A Dream of Passion" on DVD, please?)
Hindi: Considering that "Bollywood" produces many movies, I've seen remarkably few movies in Hindi (fewer than in Bengali). I love R. K. Naryan's novel The Guide, a comedy that turns to a wheeler-dealer being taken for a saint and taking on the role with lethal seirousness. The Hindi version runs nearly three hours and includes many plot-relevant songs that are not subtitled on the DVD I saw, but the story is still discernable. This 1965 movie, adapted and directed by Vijay Anand. was important historically in the diversification of the Indian film industry. It has outstanding performances by Dev Anand and Waheeda Rehman. (I enjoy Mango Soufflé, written and directed by Mahesh Dattani, though it is in some ways quite inept.)
Hungarian: The great Hungarian director is Istvan Szabo. I haven't seen "Mephisto," which won a best foreign-language movie Oscar. I think that "Colonel Redl" (which also has a powerhouse performance by Klaus Maria Brandauer) is the best of those I've seen, but "Sunshine" is more Hungarian in setting and characters than those two.
Icelandic: The slacker comedy 101 Reykjavìk (2000, directed by Baltasar Kormákur. (I actually have seen other Icelandic movies, and been to Iceland). It is enhanced by having Almodóvar's recurrent star Victoria Abril in it.
Kirghizi: Adopted Son/Beshkempir The first post-Soviet feature film produced in Kyrgyzstan film, although much of it is opaque to me, was quite a good one about coming of age with ethnographic scenes of matriachs' ritual for warding off the Evil Away from a male infant, mud brick-making, leeching, and mourning rituals. And director Aktan Abdykalykov's son Mirlan was excellent in the title role of a 13-year-old who discovers he had been adopted
Irish: "In the Name of the Father" (1993, directed by Jim Sheridan) for best, "The Crying Game" (1992, directed by Neil Jordan) for favorite, Both are riveting tales focusing on IRA terrorits. (I also love Jordan's "Mona Lisa," though I don't know if it qualifies as "Irish," even being directed by Jordan.)
Israeli (Hebrew): Yossi and Jagger (2002) is a very moving romance between two soldiers in an isolated border installation. it was directed by Eytan Fox, whose 2004 "Walk On Water" is also excellent (and confronts the same issues as Steven Spielberg's "Munich" did a year later).
Italian: I'll go with Luchino Visconti's "Rocco and His Brothers" as the best as well as being my favorite. If anyone has failed to notice that I am forever smitten by the young Alain Delon, I might add Michelangelo Antonioni's "L'eclisse" (Eclipse). For me, none of Robert Rosellini's or Federico Fellini's movies are as good as the sum of their parts with the exception of Rosellini's "Il Generale della Rovere" with a transcendent performance by Vittorio de Sica." I can't not mention Pier Paolo Pasolini's "Medea" mostly for containing the one movie performance by the diva of divas, Maria Callas. And Pasolini's "Passion According to Saint Matthew" with his mother as the Virgin Mary... and "Teorema" with Terrence Stamp as the angel of Eros..
Japanese: I think that Akira Kurosawa directed more great movies than anyone else anywhere. Many of them (including its immediate predecessor, Kagemusha (The Shadow Warrior) and the earlier adaptation of Shakespeare, "Throne of Blood," seem to lead up to "Ran" (Chaos), Kurosawa's second masterpiece about old age ("Ikuru" was the first). "Ran" is a reflection on Shakespeare's own final masterpiece, "King Lear," with one of many great performances by Nakadai Tasuke. My favorite Japanese movie is the wry samurai black comedies from the mid-1960s starring Toshiro Mifune: "Yojimbo" and "Sanjuro." (And, if Kurosawa is the Mount Everest of film directors, he rises from a Himalayan range that includes Ozu, Mizoguchi, Ichikawa, Kobayashi, Imamura (in chronological order of their emergence).)
Korean: I liked the beautiful "Bom yeoreum gaeul gyeoul geurigo bom" Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring," 2003, directed by Kim Ki-Duk). But "Tae Guk Gi" (Brotherhood of War, 2004) blew me away. At the very least, it is the best movie set against the Korean War.
Macedonian: Milcho Manchevski's "Before the Rain" ((Pred dozhdot,1995) is strangely constructed in three parts that cannot quite be set in a chronological order. It shows the emergence of ancient hatreds tamped down by Yugoslav communism. (the middle panel of the triptych is set in London, the other two were filmed on location in Macedonia).
Mexican (Spanish-language): It would be hard to argue against Luis Buñuel's "Los Olivados" being the best. No one would argue that my favorite, "Doña Herlinda y sus hijos" is the best, but it is a charming fairy tale, far removed from the bleakness of "Los Olivados" and "Amores perros. (The ending of "Y tu mamá, tambien" ruins it for me).
Mongolian:" Urga" (Close to Eden, 1991, directed by Nikita Mikhalkov) shows a family of nomads, who have some modern technology. which focuses on another nomadic family with some modern artifacts. (Less sentimental than "The Story of the Weeping Camel" and "The Cave of the Yellow Dog," both quasi-documentaries, directed by Byambasuren Dava, both of which I liked.) I'd like to see "Nohoi oro"n (State of Dogs, 1998), a reputedly strikingly photogaphed movie about the spirit of a dog seeking to find its owner.It was codirected by Peter Brosens who also codirected the bizarre (at least in its final third) Khadak (2007). Although it begs the question of how Chinggis Khan became paramount leader, I was swept up in the 2007 historical epic "Mongol" (directed and cowritten by Sergei Bodrovhttp).
Nepalese: Eric Valli's (1999) "Himalaya - l'enfance d'un chef" is mesmerizing. The story is Tibetan, as are the performers and some of the crew, though the director and those credited for the extraordinary images (Eric Guichard and Jean-Paul Meurisse) are French. The Bhutanese director, Khyentse Norbu filmed his genial account of a conflict between monastery tradition and televised soccer mansions "The Cup" (1999) in Nepal.
New Zealander (Maori): "Whale Rider," a very popular choice (over "When We Were Warriors") for best and favorite.
Norwegian: I haven't seen "Max Manus," but it's difficult to imagine that Aksel Hennie in the title role of that 2008 movie can have done better work than Max von Sydow in the title role of "Hamsum" (1996), directed by Jan Troellhttp://www.imdb.com/name/nm0377336/. The movie about the Norwegian winner of the Nobel Prize for literature portrays a marriage of Strindbergian in its savagery (though the wife, Marie, played by Ghita Nørby, is more sympathetic than in Strindberg plays) and aLear-like old man who had long been anti-British, supported Hitler and the occupation of Norway, annoyed Hitler greatly when they met, and was protected in the same wa Ezra Pound was after the war. (Troell and van Sydow are Swedish, Nørby Danish, but the movie was filmed in Norway and is about a Norwegian writer concerned about Norway's place in the Third Reich.)
Palestinian (in Arabic): Paradise Now, an absudist (dark) comedy on the difficulties of becoming a martyr and the frighteningly unreflective ease with which two young underemployed Palestinian friends undertake blowing themselves and as many Israeli soldiers as they can.
Polish: I consider "Rouge" French, the Decalogue too uneven, visually static, and anthologyy for consideration (I have reviewed each constituent, two at a time); which leaves me with Andrzej Wajda's (1957) "Kanal" or Roman Polanski's "The Pianist," which is in English.
Romani (aka "gypsy"): Tony Gatlif's (1997) Gadjo dilo/Crazy Stranger goes from showing suspicions about the stranger played by Romain Duris, to recording music, to showing the hatred of the Romani by other Romanians
Russian: Having epined that the bipartite Ivan the Terrible, directed by Sergei Eisenstein is the best film ever made, it has to be the best Russian film. Nevertheless, my favorite Eisenstein movie is the silent and fragmentary "Que viva Mexico." I love the helmets and Prokofiev's music for Eisenstein's "Alexander Nevsky," a somewhat superficial and jingoistic movie in comparison with the two (of an intended three) awe-inspiring "Ivans."
Scottish: At least shot in Scotland, by the Archers (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger), "I Know Where I am Going" is my choice, partly for the scenery, but mostly for Wendy Hiller (who thinks the title, but is mistaken). For more contemporary Scotland, "Trainspotting," of course.
Senegalese (Wolof- and French-language): "Ceddo" (1977, directed by Ousmane Sembene). With talk of the "clash of civilizations," and the continued destruction of cultures not aligning with dar-al-Islam or Christendom (and the continuing contest between the Abrahamic religions in Africa), this movie, that I was fortunate to see in a retrospective of Sembene movies that he attended some years back, deserves to be far better known, as, indeed, do his other films. It is, unfortunately, not available even on VHS. His 2004 drama centered on female genital mutilation in a Bambara village, "Moolaadé" now is, as are "Mandabi," "Xala," and "Black Girl," his first feature film. (I have seen a few Senegalese films not directed by Sembene in film festivals and the two feature films directed by Djibril Diop Mambéty on DVD; I was very impressed with his adaptation of Friedrich Dürrenmatt's play "The Visit", Hyenas, which is as good as the best Sembene movies.)
Silent: Favorite: F. W. Murnau's "Tabú" (1931) on which Robert Flaherty ucollaborated for a while in various parts of Polynesia. A not entirely predictable locale for the culmination of German Expressionism, but one should remember how much European expressionism was influence by primitivism. Should I add his "Nosferatu" as "best"? (Keaton's "The General" is IMO the best silent film, but does not belong in a list of "foreign" films!)
Slovak: For me there is no question that "The Shop on Main Street" (Obchod na korze, 1965, directed by Ján Kadár) is a great movie with an unforgettable performance by Ida Kaminskia as an elderly Jewish shopkeeper befuddled when the Nazis come.
South Africa (in a slum patois drawing from Xhosa, Zulu, Afrikaans, and English): "Yesterday" (2004, written and directed by Darrell Roodt ), which was nominated for a best foreign-language Oscar was a worthy endeavor, but I was very more impressed by Presley Chweneyagae in the title role of Tsotsi (a term meaning "thug") and a very fine ensemble cast. The movie, which won the foreign-language film Oscar, is as likely to make people want to go to Johannesburg as "Crash" (which I think is not as good a movie as "Tsotsi") is to make people want to visit Los Angeles. I have seen the arc of the movie described as "redemption"; I don't think it gets there, but I think that it goes beyond "distraction from thuggery" (Roger Ebert's characterization) to some expiation (like "Our Lady of the Assassins", shot in Medellin, Colombia, though the palette of "Tsotsi" is darker that Schroeder's movie's).
Spanish: The movie from Spain by which I was most affected was "Cría [cuervos]" (1976, soon to be out on DVD), in which Carlos Saura directed his wife Geraldine Chaplin as a mother who is dying of cancer, though the focus is on her young daughter Mónica Randall, who keeps spinning a 45 rpm record "Porque te vas?" by Jeanette. My favorite, however, is Almodóvar's "La ley del deseo" (Law of Desire, directed by Pedro Almodóvar, 1987), the last movie that Almodóvar made with Antonio Banderas the penultimate one with Carmen Maura (my other favorites are "Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios"[Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown] and "Mala Educación" [Bad Education]).
Swedish: I was transfixed by Ingmar Bergman's "Seventh Seal" at an impressionable age (18). When I see it again, I'll probably be somewhat disillusioned (though I wasn't by watching "Smiles on a Summer Night" again last year). It can be my favorite. For the best, I'll go with Bergman's "Wild Strawberries" (1958)--at least until I watch "Persona" again after many decades; it was certainly a film my generation of students loved to discuss. (The greatest non-Bergman Swedish film is the adaptation of Strindberg's Miss Julie," directed in 1951 by Bergman's mentor Alf Sjöberg.)
Taiwanese (in mixed Taiwanese [Hokkien] and Bejinghua): Best and favorite are the same: Edward Yang's Yi Yi with another winsome child, Jonathan Chang, as an obsessive 8-year-old photographer of everything around. The movies of Hou and Tsai I find confusing and alienating, though there are moments of comic absurdity in Tsai's and Hou's "City of Sadness" has historical importance.
Thai: "Rak Toraman" (Tortured love, 1986), the sequel to Pisan Archaraseranee's 1985 film "Playing Soot Tai" (The last song) is a great revenge flick (also see Kon Ichikawa's "Actor's Revenge" in Japanese.) Yes, I have seen other Thai movies, including two by Apichatpong Weerasethakul. And I found much to admire in Ekachai Uekrongtham's Beautiful Boxer, particularly the lead performance by champion kickboxer Asanee Suwan and the cinematography of Choochart Nantitanyatada.
Tibetan: I have to go with Martin Scorcese's luminous biopic of the 13th Dalai Lama, "Kundun." It was shot in Morocco by an American director of more than a little note, but it is in Tibetan and about the persecution and preservation of Tibetan culture. As is not the case for Bhutan, I have seen some movies filmed in Tibet (plus this list includes movies form Bhutan and Nepal about Tibetans), including Joan Chen's very interesting (1998) "Xiu Xiu." I also highly recommend Tom Piozet's (2002) documentaries "Tibet: Cry of the Snow Lion" and "Saltmen of Tibet, plus "Himalaya" l'enfance d'un chef" (1999), shot in Tibet by Eric Valli.
Turkish (a greater stretch): "Hamam" (1997) is arguably Italian, shot in Turkey (as is "Medea"), though the director is Turkish (Ferzan Ozpetek) and there is much Turkish dialogue. I'd like to see "Bir tat bir doku" (2001, directed by Omer Faruk Sorak), but how? German-born director Fatih Akim's 2004 movie "Gegen die Wand" (Head-On) partly takes place in Istanbul and won many awards, but I don't much like the movie, preferring Akim's earlier road comedy "Im Juli" (In July). I was also less than enthralled by "Uzak" (Distant). I want to see "Yol," which could easily sweep the field in this slot.
Ukrainian: Sergei Paradjanov's (1964) visually gorgeous, narratively frustrating "Shadows of Our Forgotten Ancestors."
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For ranking the best of the best, seven of the ten entries on my list of best film ever made are "foreign" (and two more that are in English arguably are), which is why I did not venture into "ten best foreign movies" until I had this alternate schema. (I also have posted a long list of my favorite movies.)
I've also posted lists of the
ten greatest movies of all time,
my favorite movies,
best noirs,
best English organized crime movies
best French organized crime movies,
best westerns not set in the American west,
best romantic movies with happy endings,
best romantic movies in which the lovers do not end up together for reasons other than the death of one or both of them,
best romantic movies including the death of a lover,
best religious movies celebrating a religious figure,
best movies portraying the dark side of religion,
best holidaze (Christmas and Thanksgiving) movies,
best rock-n-roll movies,
best musicals,
best gay feature film,
best gay documentary film,
best cult movies,
best black comedies,
best World War II movies,
best post-WWII German films,
best epics,
and best anti-epics,
best movies of the 1940s, the 1980s,
1939, 1999, 2000, 20001, 2002, 2005, 2007.
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