The Best Foreign Language Films of All Time

My Rating: 9.7/10

Country: Germany

Why is it So Great?: Director Wolfgang Petersen’s claustrophobic masterpiece Das Boot is the ultimate submarine adventure that will leave you with no more fingernails to chew. We follow the exploits of the crew of German submarine U-96, as it gets sent on its mission to destroy Allied convoys.

The submarine is 10 feet by 150 feet, and the sweaty claustrophobia of dim lights, reverberating sounds and confined faces is conveyed spectacularly through some amazing performances and incredible direction. And such is the marvellous depiction of fear in the crew's eyes, as they huddle in silence each time the enemy lurks above! The suspense literally keeps you at the edge of your seat - the silence, deafening. The movie is put together with such fantastic detail, it brings us into the very belly of U-96, almost smelling the mouldy air, feeling the sickening lurches of the depth charges and yearning for fresh air. Brilliant, moving filmmaking like this deserves a place on your shelf

My Rating: 9.6/10

Country: Brazil

Why is it So Great?: City of God is an arresting and unmissable cinematic triumph, peopled with affecting characters that avoid cliche, and a familiar story signposted with brutally shocking punctuation.

In a film of battering audacity, no shock hits harder than the way that director Fernando Meirelles choreographs murder to a dance beat, an exuberant form of kiddie recreation. Meirelles is a world-class talent who illuminates every frame of this fresh, ferocious and indelibly moving film that moves at whiplash velocity thanks to a terse script. City of God has the scent of a classic!

My Rating: 9.4/10

Country: Mexico

Why is it So Great?: Like any great myth, Pan's Labyrinth encodes its messages through displays of magic. The result of the intricate interplay that we witness on screen is a fairy tale for adults that is violent, sometimes shocking, yet utterly engrossing.

It's a heartbreaking tale of cruelty and hopelessness, softened only by the wondrous fantasy of Ofelia's (Ivana Baquero in brilliant form manifesting a child’s fears and uncertainties through little more than widened eyes and shortened breath) imaginary world. Guillermo Del Toro gives us a film which is both searing and haunting as it takes us from the bleak to the sublime.

The spell it casts lingers long after the final reel.

My Rating: 9.4/10

Country: South Korea

Why is it So Great?: Memories of Murder is such a taut, effective thriller it's a shame you have to read subtitles to gauge just how good a movie it is.

The movie seems so American from afar. It's got serial killers and comic detectives and sex crimes and night chases and squabbling partners. But literally in the first sequence it establishes its uniqueness and the understated eye of its director, Joon-ho Bong. A policier beset by melancholy and infused with turbulent social-political shadings, Bong’s masterpiece almost single-handedly resuscitates the moribund serial killer genre. Throughout the film, Bong fills his compositions with elements that sum up the incongruity, the sheer messiness, of life at its most banal, even in the middle of a murder investigation.

Yet even as the movie presses towards resolution, one can feel the director's reluctance to provide easy epiphanies, smug outcomes, tame answers. He's more interested in capturing a society in flux as illuminated by the crisis of the murder investigation. What emerges is quite extraordinary!

My Rating: 9.3/10

Country: France

Why is it So Great?: One of the most deeply and disturbingly nihilistic films ever made, as well as one of the most heart-pounding thrillers on record, Henri-Georges Clouzot`s The Wages of Fear is as much about the origin of manufactured fear as it is about the folly of courage that feeds on it.

But as lofty and abstract as Clouzot`s allegory may be, his execution is vibrantly physical and immediate. Turning the screws with a relentlessness that impresses even in this age of the ruthless, high-tech thriller, Clouzot strings together situations of vividly, almost sadistically imagined danger. The chemical reaction Clouzot gets from combining various genres is pure dynamite—so to speak—as four men stoically act out a suicide mission: to drive two trucks of nitroglycerin three hundred miles over uneven terrain.

The Wages of Fear is a frantic, vicious, existentialist howl that still manages to laugh; it goes grinning into the void.

My Rating: 9.3/10

Country: Italy

Why is it So Great?: Bicycle Thieves captures, in elemental strokes, the crushing of the human spirit at the hands of poverty, indifference and despair.

The picture is a pure exercise in directorial virtuosity. De Sica carefully balances a generally tragic sensibility with a quiet undercurrent of hope, all the while sucking us into the story with the sheer urgency of the search for a stolen bicycle. Yes, it's a titan in the annals on cinema history, but more importantly this is a profoundly moving allegory that balances the grimness of its characters' plight against some of the period's most elegant visual poetry.

All in all, Bicycle Thieves is a brilliant, tactlessly real work of art.

My Rating: 9.3/10

Country: Italy

Why is it So Great?: "Humor cuts oppressors down to size, takes their sting away, renders them powerless to destroy us. Don't give in to what diminishes you. Learn to laugh at it and reduce its power over you" Joan Chittister has written. That spirit is at the heart of this Italian comedy Life is Beautiful. Director Roberto Benigni shows how humor is a rich spiritual resource that enables us to cope with the unexpected and to smile through the unbearable. He shows how laughter can set the spirit free even in the most dire circumstances.

Life Is Beautiful manages to walk the extremely thin line between humor, fantasy, and tragedy, with stunning results.

My Rating: 9.3/10

Country: Japan

Why is it So Great?: One of the all-time-great "procedurals," High and Low is a combination of immensely powerful psychodrama and exquisitely detailed police procedural - a movie that illuminates its world with a wholeness and complexity you rarely see in film. The images populate the widescreen frame like a pressure cooker that is ready to blow up. And in High and Low, blow up they do.

As Akira Kurosawa weaves together character study, social commentary and police procedure, he combines what might have been a whole series of movies for another, lesser director. Nothing compares to the experience of watching a movie where every scene, every sequence, every shot are alive with confidence in the medium. Your complaints with Kurosawa (if any) would dissolve in the backwash of pure film pleasure High and low offers, as you're introduced once again to the master.

My Rating: 9.2/10

Country: France

Why is it So Great?: The limited possibilities of making drama out of attempted prison breaks have been worked so often and so astutely in the congenial medium of films, that it is amazing to find the subject handled again with genuine tension and even some originality in Jacques Becker's classic Le Trou.

Using a cast of nonprofessionals, Becker works up a big house cliff-hanger that throbs with excitement and suspense and, at the same time, offers some stabbing insights into the anxieties and energies of imprisoned men, with great simplicity. Le Trou has such an amazing kinetic rhythm to it that one both feels and forgets the claustrophobic environs. Jacques Becker's swan song is nothing short of a masterpiece!

My Rating: 9.2/10

Country: Germany

Why is it So Great?: Downfall, Oliver Hirschbiegel’s thoroughly devastating digest of the Third Reich’s final days, isn’t about commuting the sentence that history gave the Nazis, but heeding its warning - a gruesome, sustained-tension lesson about informed politics.

The film's searing portrayal of an utterly pathetic fanaticism is its most enduring effect. Downfall takes on the unenviable task of portraying Hitler as a man, rather than a caricature or parody as the norm has dictated - a long stare into an abyss from which no comforting answers can emerge. It features a staggeringly creepy performance by Bruno Ganz, whose Hitler is both a raving psychotic and a beaten, melancholic man. He generates indelible ferocity as Hitler — his composure snapping at will and foam frothing during numerous manic-depressive, delusional flights of fancy about military might.

Downfall is a nearly three-hour film that commands repeat viewing to comprehend the sense of indefensible nationalism that provided fertile soil for a government to annihilate 50 million people. The overriding moral of the story is an old one; think for yourself, regardless of what any government tells you is righteous.

My Rating: 9.2/10

Country: Estonia

Why is it So Great?: Tangerines is a simple but gripping look at human side of conflict.

Except for brief outbursts of violence, Tangerines is, like its hero Ivo, a stoic and introspective thing. The story moves slowly and methodically, tempering the expected — and only fleetingly heartwarming — rapprochement between enemies with a more acerbic outlook about human nature. Although there are moments of quiet humor, Tangerines is mostly a tragedy, told via looks exchanged between heated adversaries and their imperturbable intermediary. Over the course of the film, those looks soften from glaring mistrust to acceptance to heartbroken endurance in the face of the meaninglessness and inevitability of death.

For anyone looking for an uncomplicated anti-war argument painted by historical insight, superb performances and airtight direction, 'Tangerines' is a must-see. Just like a tangerine, it is a delicious mix of sweet and acidic flavors.

My Rating: 9.1/10

Country: Denmark

Why is it So Great?: A sublime performance from Mads Mikkelsen is just one facet of the brilliant and unnerving drama The Hunt, that provides brutal, thought-provoking answers to the tough questions it asks. It's a maddening, strangely riveting cinematic experience - an extremely effective, skilfully put together psychological thriller, whose only tools are human character traits.

Vinterberg uses a sharp cinematic knife to cut to the core of the matter: that the human heart can never be entirely civilized and, ultimately, each man is alone with his fate - a frighteningly plausible examination of how suspicion can spread through otherwise decent people.

You leave The Hunt unsettled in the best sense. Its images and implications are likely to stay in your head a long time!

My Rating: 9.1/10

Country: Japan

Why is it So Great?: Grave of the Fireflies is Isao Takahata’s saturnine study of innocence rotted away in the name of righteousness and a sobering reminder of the futility of war.

The movie quivers with every kind of wracking emotion: rage, sorrow, despair, fatigue, and in the end, a tiny measure of hope that perhaps there's something better than this in the next world. The ephemeral fireflies, which fascinate the children and accompany them everywhere, become a potent and lyrical symbol of the fragility, brevity and beauty of life. We’re so used to seeing the human spirit triumph. Here, we’re allowed to understand how it might fail.

A haunting, harrowing war movie, an emotionally devastating character study, and an extraordinarily restrained example of anime, Grave of the Fireflies is a unique and unforgettable masterpiece. Sob? You’ll howl the cinema down.

My Rating: 9.1/10

Country: Algeria

Why is it So Great?: Four decades later, 'Z', Costa-Gavras' glimpse into the machinations of political violence, intolerance, willful ignorance, and systemic oppression has lost none of its urgent relevance.

It is a thrilling, compelling, run through with vivid supporting characters and narrative twists and turns that have the dramatic punch of fiction even when based on real events. Z combines the intellectual heft of revolution-themed films like The Battle of Algiers with the drop-dead cool of mod touchstones like Le Samouraï to jaw- dropping effect.

In its slick cinematic urgency and its outrage, Z still has the power to shake you up.

My Rating: 9.0/10

Country: Italy

Why is it So Great?: The content in The Battle of Algiers has classic and tragic dimensions beyond politics.

This seminal. meticulously crafted work about Algiers struggle for freedom, establishes a kinetic documentary effect, making the impact of every shoot-out and explosion a deeply personal experience. Partially because of its documentary style, used so effectively by director Gillo Pontecorvo, it never gets heavy-handed - exploring the idea of violence as a necessary evil for freedom.

It's a frank blend of exoticism, eroticism and foreshadowed horror, that has not lost even a fraction of its power, almost fifty years on.

My Rating: 9.0/10

Country: Iran

Why is it So Great?: About Elly is a stunning surprise package, profound in utterly unexpected ways.

Having put us at ease through the first act, director Asghar Farhadi introduces tension in the second and then something frightening happens in the third. Abruptly, not once but several times, the movie changes tone as a rolling series of crises amplify the seaside tension exponentially. As we are pulled in deeper, the tightly structured story takes drastic turns as deceit by multiple characters is exposed and mistrust grows. Go with your eyes wide open and your mind engaged and prepare to be astonished.

Emotional intensity is Farhadi's métier, and to see About Elly is to revel in his skill. It’s an incisive portrait of a particular society, but it should resonate everywhere.

My Rating: 9.0/10

Country: South Korea

Why is it So Great?: A deceptively simple and humorous tale with wonderfully nasty flashes of violence that feel entirely real, Mother is an oddball sinister murder mystery that's much more than that.

The film has visual panache, but it's the way Bong uses such a unique character to tap into the lonely, damaged nature of the private eye archetype that really makes Mother stand out. Bong dredges up dread from the mousy determination of Hye-ja's Miss Marple-like detective work - her meekness hides an astonishing fortitude.

Beautifully crafted and full of surprises, Mother grows more compelling as it unfolds. Packs a serious punch!

My Rating: 8.9/10

Country: South Korea

Why is it So Great?: Just like the title of the movie, ‘Parasite’ attaches to you and doesn't let go. A light farce that gradually transforms into an urgent class parable, getting exponentially more compelling moment by moment. The film is polite until it drops all pretense.

Nimble, funny, complex and heartbreaking, it is a stinging indictment of economic inequality. It's also a rip-roaring tale of two cities and two families colliding with such force that society itself could crumble and collapse into chaos. Between its richly textured visual style and its clever narrative twists, the film keeps escalating the suspense while a subtle commentary on socioeconomic class simmers beneath the surface.

How Bong gets you to gasp, shriek, and laugh within the span of seconds is beyond comprehension. No words can describe the giddy thrill of watching Parasite.

My Rating: 8.9/10

Country: France

Why is it So Great?: This one is a demonic clockwork thriller. In Diabolique, character and circumstance come together in a twisted concoction more sulphurous than anyone could have crafted. The movie is a skillful marriage of ingredients that tread dangerously close to the edge of reasoning while still absorbing them in impeccable artistic standards. The ending, much copied, is justly famous. Despite audible relief at the conclusion, you would emerge with bravado but nonetheless shaky. But it's the implacable build-up that seals its classic status.

All in all, it's a diabolical masterpiece!

My Rating: 8.9/10

Country: Hong Kong

Why is it So Great?: Seductively shot and beautifully acted, Infernal Affairs is like a summation film, bringing together all the themes, motifs, mood, and style of the gritty policier Hong Kong thriller.

Beauty in its consistent, washed-out blues and silvers, grace in its understated, intense male performances and energy in its unyielding commitment to tone and tension make this movie a landmark in new-era hyper intelligent action fare. The twists offered in Infernal Affairs take the genre to enthralling new heights, guaranteeing that any future such efforts will have an entirely new bar for which to aim.

This is what movies are supposed to feel like - provocative, exciting, chilling, complex and fully engaging!

My Rating: 8.9/10

Country: Canada

Why is it So Great?: From its arresting opening to its shattering conclusion, the Canadian film Incendies is muscular, emotional film-making of the highest order, self-confident in its delivery yet always respectful of its characters' plight. Watching Incendies is a long, hard, and emotionally draining experience but one that richly rewards the time and effort invested.

Denis Villeneuve's tormented family drama strips off one layer of meaning after another on its way to a thoroughly jolting terminus. It's a raw and brutal look at the unending strife in the region, but it's also an unforgettable mystery that keeps the audience riveted through one surprising plot turn after another.

A story of hope amid the ruins - one that everybody can appreciate, no matter their politics.

My Rating: 8.9/10

Country: Japan

Why is it So Great?: Throne Of Blood defeats categorisation. It remains a landmark of visual strength, permeated by a particularly Japanese sensibility, and is possibly the finest Shakespearean adaptation ever committed to the screen.

It captures the spirit of Shakespeare's writing, as the driving rain, swirling fog and screeching animals lend metaphorical weight to this tale of murderous human ambition. With its all-pervading sense of doom, it's visually ravishing, as you would expect, employing compositional tableaux from the Noh drama, high contrast photography, and extraordinary images of rain, galloping horses, the birds fleeing from the forest.

Genius, pure genius!

My Rating: 8.9/10

Country: South Korea

Why is it So Great?: Oldboy is a delirious, confronting ride, a movie full of visceral shocks and aesthetic pleasures: it has an explosive immediacy and a persistent afterlife, a lingering impact that is hard to shake. Dae-su's guardian-like enemy stokes his bloodlust, embittering the free man's returning love of life. The climax is a scarlet swelling into Greek tragedy as truth, reprisal and justice smear.

Both brutal and lyrical, writer-director Park Chan-wook's existential nail-biter has torture scenes that will have you avoiding dentists, sushi bars and badly appointed hotel rooms for a long, long time.

My Rating: 8.9/10

Country: Japan

Why is it So Great?: In Akira Kurosawa’s highly underrated sequel to the much revered Yojimbo, Toshiro Mifune reprises his role as the titular master-less samurai. The fact that Sanjuro is played by none other than the grunting, swashbuckling Toshiro Mifune makes the movie thoroughly enjoyable from beginning to end.

But while Mifune's satiric portrayal is a delight, Akira Kurosawa sets the movie in a more recognizably Japanese milieu, with a complicated plot involving political and historical intrigue. Kurosawa applies the full force of his cinematic genius, with brilliant widescreen composition that tells the story in visual terms as clear as the verbal ones. He guides the narrative mostly for laughs, but when the action kicks in the sword fighting is brutal and memorable.

Sanjuro may not be Akira Kurosawa’s most celebrated work, but you will find his witty paw prints all over the snappy dialogue, unique characters and intriguing plot – an effort that I personally rank higher than Yojimbo!

My Rating: 8.9/10

Country: Argentina

Why is it So Great?: Damián Szifron's 'Wild Tales' is a deliriously creative, deliciously diabolical anthology film about modern day violence. It is an outrageous collection of shorts set in Szifron's homeland—a sextet of improbable shaggy-dog stories, insane urban legends and entertainingly twisted cautionary yarns of the sort that people dispense during a night of heavy drinking, tied together by violent themes. Szifron has a devilish good time crafting the shorts and exhibits a sophisticated eye, and a flair for creating morally ambiguous characters you don't know whether to root for. But that's Wild Tales for you - a wondrous, whacked-out look at volatile human beings doing what they think is right, when wronged.

Wild Tales is a splendidly anarchic portrait of a world on the verge of a nervous breakdown - as sharp as a corkscrew and every bit as twisted.

My Rating: 8.9/10

Country: South Korea

Why is it So Great?: The Chaser is a clever riff on cops-and-criminals formalism that interpolates old-fashioned plot devices (a missing girl, a cryptic phone number, an epicene serial killer, a corrupt mayor) into a Borgesian web, ultimately deriving its primary tension not from the vulgarity of corporeal harm - though there's plenty of that - but from a lust for inductive discovery that refuses to teeter on the precipice of genre cliché.

In between moments of chisel-hacking horror, there is some impressively dark humor and top-notch acting. But be warned – emotionally this movie will reach deep into the pit of your stomach and wriggle your guts about before wrenching them out. Hong-Jin Na's superb direction ensures that the film remains suspenseful on a number of different levels, by sustaining an atmosphere of rhythmically festering futility without the possibility of facile redemption.

The Chaser is a superbly directed, thoroughly gripping and morally twisted crime thriller that's worth every minute of your time!

My Rating: 8.9/10

Country: South Korea

Why is it So Great?: Hong-jin Na lets his intensity drag him over the brink of an abyss of fear and superstition in his rural-horror The Wailing. As Kwak Do-won’s slapdash country police sergeant cop investigates a series of violent murders apparently linked to a strange sickness, Na carefully blindsides with a bungling police procedural. The comedy, though, quickly steepens into a calamitous atmosphere in which anything could be unleashed. Despite plunging us deep into the action from the start, Na keeps us tonally off-balance for the next hour, and takes his time setting up the investigative elements, before peeling away these ostensibly formulaic layers to reveal a far more complex blend of police procedural, visceral horror, pitch black comedy and socio-theological allegory.

Two-and-a-half hours long, but never slow, The Wailing takes its time to burrow under your skin, but by the time it weaves its dark, potent spell, it leaves you with a lingering, unshakable sense of dread that Hollywood horror films can rarely muster.

My Rating: 8.8/10

Country: Germany

Why is it So Great?: The White Ribbon is a striking, in many ways indelible work, and it's tempting to be carried away by Haneke's craft and assurance as a filmmaker.

Haneke makes his way through this complex and knotty subject matter with a staggeringly effortless grace. His direction is immaculate - as an expression of philosophy, it's profound and thought-provoking; as a work of cinema, it is flawless.

Far from enjoyable escapism, The White Ribbon is nonetheless utterly compelling and quite beautiful in its unsettling presentation of this prosaic evil. Up close, it's a blur of meticulous details that don't quite make sense; but step back and it's towering ambitions become indelibly apparent.

My Rating: 8.8/10

Country: Japan

Why is it So Great?: What's remarkable about Ran is that the drama enhances the spectacle the same way the spectacle bolsters the drama. Akira Kurosawa's Samurai take on King Lear is brutal but brilliant, a startling transposition to match his earlier Macbeth adaptation Throne Of Blood. By the time Kurosawa's camera comes to rest on the film's final, poignant image, a painting of the Buddha that one character had promised another would protect him from harm, the movie seemingly has accomplished the impossible: one-upping Shakespeare.

Ultimately it is this mixture of the grand gesture and the fine touch, the big world and the small people who occupy it, that lingers with us long after Ran is over. A landmark of world cinema, this is a rousing, staggering epic and a haunting drama of timeless significance.

My Rating: 8.8/10

Country: Germany

Why is it So Great?: The Lives of Others is a powerful but quiet film, constructed of hidden thoughts and secret desires. It is that rare thing: a best foreign language Oscar-winner that fully deserves its prize. Beautifully acted, and making equal demands on our intelligence and on our hearts, it is a significant act of historical reckoning.

Beautifully acted, and making equal demands on our intelligence and on our hearts, it is a significant act of historical reckoning. It works beautifully, both as a social and psychological drama and as a taut, tightly wired thriller. Starts out dark and challenging then comes to a startlingly satisfying and warmly human conclusion that lingers long after the curtain has come down.

It shows how the Wall finally fell, not with a bang, but because of whispers!

My Rating: 8.7/10

Country: France

Why is it So Great?: In the wrong hands, The Intouchables could have been a sentimental mess. Luckily it's not and instead of being a film about labels, it's about people and the healing power of camaraderie. It's a situation ripe for culture-clash comedy, a set-up that co-directors Eric Toledano and Olivier Nakache exploit with gusto, as Driss takes stock of his opulent new surroundings and Philippe rediscovers his appetite for life. The cliches are so skillfully navigated only the heartless will fail to be charmed.

Capturing the unspoken shorthand, the adventurousness and the humour essential to enduring friendships makes the The Intouchables must see. It's as slick as an oil spill, as sugary as an eclair, and you will find it irresistible.