Genre: Foreign Movies
Writing on cinema from beyond the English-speaking world — the films, traditions, and voices that tell their stories in other tongues.
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My Neighbor Totoro (1988)
Hayao Miyazaki's 1988 Studio Ghibli pastoral. Two girls discover forest spirits in rural Japan. Catbus, soot sprites, kindness throughout. -
Children of Heaven (1997)
Majidi's 1997 Iranian family drama. A boy and his sister share one pair of shoes between school sessions. First Iranian film nominated for Best Foreign Oscar. -
Leviathan (2014)
Zvyagintsev's 2014 Russian drama. A man fighting a corrupt mayor over his coastal property. The whale skeleton on the beach. Modern Russia in two hours forty. -
Come and See (1985)
Klimov's 1985 Soviet WWII drama. A teenage boy joins partisans in Nazi-occupied Belarus. Among the most devastating war films ever made. -
Stalker (1979)
Tarkovsky's 1979 Soviet SF film. A guide leads two men into the Zone. Two and a half slow hours that justify every minute. One of the great philosophical films. -
Battleship Potemkin (1925)
Eisenstein's 1925 Soviet propaganda film. The Odessa Steps sequence remains the most-imitated montage in cinema. 75 minutes that changed editing. -
A Separation (2011)
Farhadi's 2011 Iranian domestic-legal drama. A middle-class couple's divorce becomes a moral procedural. Best Foreign Oscar. Pairs with Presumed Innocent. -
Taste of Cherry (1997)
Kiarostami's 1997 Iranian drama. A man drives around Tehran looking for someone to bury him after his suicide. Palme d'Or. Tests viewer patience and rewards it. -
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2009)
Oplev's 2009 Swedish thriller. Noomi Rapace as Lisbeth Salander. Original adaptation of Stieg Larsson's trilogy. Sharper than the Fincher remake. -
Let the Right One In (2008)
Alfredson's 2008 Swedish vampire film. A bullied 12-year-old boy and the girl-shaped vampire next door. The American remake softened everything that worked.