The 50 Best Foreign Language Movies

Yojimbo is a 1961 jidaigeki (period drama) film directed by Akira Kurosawa. It tells the story of a ronin, portrayed by Toshiro Mifune, who arrives in a small town where competing crime lords vie for supremacy. The two bosses each try to hire the deadly newcomer as a bodyguard (yojimbo in Japanese).

Based on the success of Yojimbo, Kurosawa's Sanjuro (1962) was altered to feature a very similar lead character.

Throne of Blood (literally, "Spider Web Castle") is a 1957 Japanese film directed by Akira Kurosawa. The film transposes the plot of William Shakespeare's play Macbeth to feudal Japan, with stylistic elements drawn from Noh drama.

La Strada (The Road) is a 1954 Italian drama directed by Federico Fellini from his own screenplay co-written with Tullio Pinelli and Ennio Flaiano. The film portrays the journey of a brutish strongman (Anthony Quinn) and a naïve young woman (Giulietta Masina) whom he buys from her mother and takes with him on the road; their encounters with his old rival the Fool (Richard Basehart) cause their destruction.

Fellini has called La Strada "a complete catalogue of my entire mythological world, a dangerous representation of my identity that was undertaken with no precedent whatsoever." As a result, the film demanded more time, effort and suffering than any of his other films, before or since. The development process was long and tortuous; it was extremely difficult to secure financial backing; casting proved problematic; injuries, personnel changes and inclement weather disrupted the production schedule more than once; budget shortages constantly plagued the director and his production supervisor, forcing them to take extraordinary measures to keep going. Finally, just before shooting was completed, Fellini suffered a nervous breakdown that necessitated medical treatment in order to complete principal photography. Initial critical reaction was harsh, and the film's screening at the Venice Film Festival was the occasion of a bitter controversy that escalated into a public brawl between Fellini's supporters and detractors.

Subsequently, however, La Strada has become "one of the most influential films ever made", according to the American Film Institute. It won the inaugural Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1956. It was placed fourth in the 1992 British Film Institute directors' list of cinema's top 10 films.

The Rules of the Game (original French title: La Règle du jeu) is a 1939 French film directed by Jean Renoir and starring Nora Gregor, Paulette Dubost, Mila Parély, Marcel Dalio, Julien Carette, Roland Toutain, Gaston Modot, Pierre Magnier and Renoir. The film is a comedy of manners that depicts members of upper-class French society and their servants just before the beginning of World War II, showing their moral callousness on the eve of impending destruction.

Renoir used sophisticated cinematic techniques such as deep-focus cinematography and a constantly moving camera. The film's original budget of 2.5 million francs was increased to 5 million; it became the most expensive film made in France up to that time and additional funds had to be sought.

Renoir's career in France was at its pinnacle in 1939 and The Rules of the Game was eagerly anticipated. However, its premiere was met with anger and disapproval by film critics and the public. Renoir reduced the film's running time from 113 minutes to 85, but even then the film was a critical and financial disaster. In in October 1939, it was banned by the wartime French government for "having an undesirable influence over the young".

For many years, the 85-minute version was the only one available, but despite this its reputation slowly grew. In 1956, boxes of original material were rediscovered and a reconstructed version of the film premiered that year at the Venice Film Festival, with only a minor scene from Renoir's first cut missing. Since then, the film has often been cited as one of the greatest films in the history of cinema. Numerous film critics and directors have praised it and cited it as an inspiration for their own work.

Tokyo Story (Tōkyō Monogatari?) is a 1953 Japanese film directed by Yasujirō Ozu. It tells the story of an aging couple who travel to Tokyo to visit their grown children. The film contrasts the behavior of their children, who are too busy to pay them much attention, and their widowed daughter-in-law, who treats them with kindness. It is often regarded as Ozu's masterpiece, and has appeared several times in the British Film Institute lists of the greatest films ever made.

It was inspired by the American film Make Way for Tomorrow (1937).

Persona is a 1966 Swedish film written and directed by Ingmar Bergman and starring Bibi Andersson and Liv Ullmann. Persona’s story revolves around a young nurse named Alma (Bibi Andersson) and her patient, a well-known stage actress named Elisabet Vogler (Liv Ullmann), who has suddenly ceased to speak. The relationship between the two women becomes strained and the border between dream and reality becomes blurred. By the end of the film the identities of Alma and Elisabeth appear to merge.

Persona has been labelled a psychological drama and modernist horror and was subject to cuts due to the film’s controversial subject matter. It is the sixth collaboration between influential cinematographer Sven Nykvist and director Ingmar Bergman and features their trademark minimalism. As with Bergman’s other works, the film is shot and set in Sweden and deals with the themes of illness, bleakness, death and insanity.

Persona is considered one of the major works of the 20th century by essayists and critics such as Susan Sontag who referred to it as Bergman's masterpiece. Other critics have described it as "one of this century’s great works of art". In Sight and Sound’s 2012 Greatest Films Poll it comes in at 17th in the critics poll (tied with Akira Kurosawa's "Seven Samurai") and 13th in the directors poll. Persona won the award for Best Film at the 4th Guldbagge Awards and it was Sweden's entry to the 39th Academy Award category for Best Foreign Film. It currently holds a 92% "Fresh" rating at Rotten Tomatoes.

The film was released on 31 August 1966, while the promotional premiere took place on 18 October 1966 at the Spegeln cinema in Stockholm. The film opened in the U.S. on 6 March 1967.

Nuovo Cinema Paradiso (New Paradise Cinema), internationally released as Cinema Paradiso, is a 1988 Italian drama film written and directed by Giuseppe Tornatore. The film stars Jacques Perrin, Philippe Noiret, Leopoldo Trieste, Marco Leonardi, Agnese Nano and Salvatore Cascio, and was produced by Franco Cristaldi and Giovanna Romagnoli, while the music score was composed by Ennio Morricone along with his son, Andrea.

Kagemusha ("Shadow Warrior"?) is a 1980 film by Akira Kurosawa. In Japanese, kagemusha is a term used to denote a political decoy. It is set in the Sengoku period of Japanese history and tells the story of a lower-class criminal who is taught to impersonate a dying warlord in order to dissuade opposing lords from attacking the newly vulnerable clan. The warlord whom the kagemusha impersonates is based on daimyo Takeda Shingen, and the film ends with the climactic 1575 Battle of Nagashino.

High and Low (Tengoku to Jigoku?, literally "Heaven and Hell") is a 1963 police procedural crime drama film directed by Akira Kurosawa, starring Toshiro Mifune, Tatsuya Nakadai and Kyōko Kagawa. The film is loosely based on King's Ransom (1959), by Ed McBain.

Nostalgia for the Light (Spanish: Nostalgia de la Luz) is a documentary released in 2010 by Patricio Guzmán to address the lasting impacts of Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship. Guzmán focuses on the similarities between astronomers researching humanity’s past, in an astronomical sense, and the struggle of many Chilean women who still search, after decades, for the remnants of their relatives executed during the dictatorship. Patricio Guzmán narrates the documentary himself and the documentary includes interviews and commentary from those affected and from astronomers and archeologists.

As a filmmaker Patricio Guzmán's filmography has focused mostly on the political and social issues that have plagued Chile. He explored Chile under Salvador Allende and his government (Salvador Allende, 2004), and Pinochet’s dictatorship and his human rights abuses (See Batalla de Chile [The Battle of Chile trilogy, 1975-1979], Le cas Pinochet [The Pinochet Case], 2001) and others. The latter film deals more so with the aftermath of those human rights abuses.

Pather Panchali, English: Song of the Little Road) is a 1955 Bengali drama film directed by Satyajit Ray and produced by the Government of West Bengal, India. It is based on Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay's 1929 Bengali novel of the same name and is Ray's directorial debut. It features Subir Banerjee, Kanu Banerjee, Karuna Banerjee, Uma Dasgupta and Chunibala Devi in major roles. The first film in the Apu trilogy, Pather Panchali depicts the childhood of the protagonist Apu (Subir Banerjee) and his elder sister Durga (Uma Dasgupta), and the harsh village life of their poor family.

Production was interrupted due to funding problems and took nearly three years. The film was shot mainly on location, had a limited budget, featured mostly amateur actors, and was made by an inexperienced crew. The sitar virtuoso Ravi Shankar composed its soundtrack using classical Indian ragas. Following its premiere in 1955 during an exhibition in New York's Museum of Modern Art, Pather Panchali was released in Calcutta the same year to enthusiastic reception. A special screening was attended by the Chief Minister of West Bengal and the Prime Minister of India. Critics have praised its realism, humanity and soul-stirring quality, while others have called its slow pace a drawback, and some have condemned it for romanticising poverty. Scholars have commented on the film's lyrical quality and realism (influenced by Italian neorealism), its portrayal of the poverty and small delights of daily life, and the use of what the author Darius Cooper has termed the "epiphany of wonder", among other themes.

The tale of Apu's life is continued in the two subsequent installments of Ray's Apu trilogy: Aparajito (The Unvanquished, 1956) and Apur Sansar (The World of Apu, 1959). Pather Panchali is described as a turning point in Indian cinema, as it was among the films that pioneered the Parallel Cinema movement, which espoused authenticity and social realism. The first film from independent India to attract major international critical attention, it won India's National Film Award for Best Feature Film in 1955, the Best Human Document award at the 1956 Cannes Film Festival, and several other awards, establishing Ray as a distinguished filmmaker. It features in several lists of great films.

Sansho the Bailiff (Sanshō Dayū?) is a 1954 Japanese period film directed by Kenji Mizoguchi. Based on a short story of the same name by Mori Ōgai, it tells the story of two aristocratic children sold into slavery. It is often considered one of Mizoguchi's finest films, along with Ugetsu and The Life of Oharu. It bears his trademark interest in freedom, poverty and woman's place in society, and features beautiful images and long and complicated shots. The director of photography for this film was Mizoguchi's regular collaborator Kazuo Miyagawa.

In the United Kingdom and Ireland, it is known by its Japanese title Sanshō Dayū.

Bande à part is a 1964 Nouvelle vague film directed by Jean-Luc Godard. It was released as Band of Outsiders in North America; its French title derives from the phrase faire bande à part, which means "to do something apart from the group."

The film is an adaptation of the novel Fools' Gold (Doubleday Crime Club, 1958) by American author Dolores Hitchens (1907–1973).

The film belongs to the French New Wave movement. Godard described it as "Alice in Wonderland meets Franz Kafka".

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is a 2000 wuxia film. An American-Chinese-Hong Kong-Taiwanese co-production, the film was directed by Ang Lee and featured an international cast of ethnic Chinese actors, including Chow Yun-fat, Michelle Yeoh, Zhang Ziyi and Chang Chen. The film was based on the fourth novel in a pentalogy, known in China as the Crane Iron Pentalogy, by wuxia novelist Wang Dulu. The martial arts and action sequences were choreographed by Yuen Wo Ping.

Made on a US$17 million budget, with dialogue in Mandarin, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon became a surprise international success, grossing $213.5 million. It grossed US$128 million in the United States, becoming the highest-grossing foreign-language film in American history. It has won over 40 awards. The film won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film (Taiwan) and three other Academy Awards, and was nominated for six other Academy Awards, including Best Picture. The film also won four BAFTAs and two Golden Globe Awards, one for Best Foreign Film. Along with its awards success, Crouching Tiger continues to be hailed as one of the greatest and most influential foreign language films in the United States, especially coming out of China. It has been praised for its martial arts sequences, story, and cinematography.

Three Colors: Red (French: Trois couleurs: Rouge) is a 1994 film co-written, produced, and directed by Polish filmmaker Krzysztof Kieślowski. It is the final film of The Three Colors Trilogy, which examines the French Revolutionary ideals; it is preceded by Blue and White. Kieślowski had announced that this would be his final film, which proved true with the director's sudden death in 1996. Red is about fraternity, which it examines by showing characters whose lives gradually become closely interconnected, with bonds forming between two characters who appear to have little in common.

Oldboy (RR: Oldeuboi; MR: Oldŭboi) is a 2003 South Korean mystery thriller film directed by Park Chan-wook. It is based loosely on the Japanese manga of the same name written by Nobuaki Minegishi and Garon Tsuchiya. Oldboy is the second installment of The Vengeance Trilogy, preceded by Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and followed by Sympathy for Lady Vengeance.

The film follows the story of one Oh Dae-su, who is locked in a hotel room for 15 years without knowing his captor's motives. When he is finally released, Dae-su finds himself still trapped in a web of conspiracy and violence. His own quest for vengeance becomes tied in with romance when he falls for an attractive sushi chef.

The film won the Grand Prix at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival and high praise from the President of the Jury, director Quentin Tarantino. Critically, the film has been well received in the United States, with an 80% "Certified Fresh" rating at Rotten Tomatoes. Film critic Roger Ebert claimed that Oldboy is a "powerful film not because of what it depicts, but because of the depths of the human heart which it strips bare". In 2008, voters on CNN named it one of the ten best Asian films ever made. A remake with the same title was released in 2013 in the United States.

Flame & Citron (Flammen & Citronen) (Danish: Flammen & Citronen) is a 2008 Danish drama/action co-written and directed by Ole Christian Madsen. The film, a fictionalized account based on fact, is about two Danish resistance movement fighters nicknamed Flame and Citron, during the Nazi occupation of Denmark in World War II. The most expensive Danish film produced to that date, it was highly successful at the box office and won numerous awards.

3 Idiots is a 2009 Indian coming-of-age comedy-drama film co-written, edited and directed by Rajkumar Hirani, with a screenplay by Abhijat Joshi, and produced by Vidhu Vinod Chopra. It was loosely adapted from the novel Five Point Someone by Chetan Bhagat. The film stars Aamir Khan, Kareena Kapoor, R. Madhavan, Sharman Joshi, Omi Vaidya, Parikshit Sahni and Boman Irani. 3 Idiots went on to become the highest-grossing Bollywood film.

Upon release, the film broke all opening box office records in India. It was the highest-grossing film in its opening weekend in India and had the highest opening day collections for a Bollywood film. It also held the record for highest net collections in the first week for a Bollywood film. It also became one of the few Indian films to become a major success in East Asian markets such as China, eventually bringing its overseas total to more than US$ 25 million—the highest-grossing Bollywood film of all time in overseas markets, before being overtaken by Dhoom 3. It was expected to be the first Indian film to be officially released on YouTube, within 12 weeks of releasing in theatres on 25 March 2010, but finally got officially released on YouTube in May 2012. The film also went on to win many awards, winning six Filmfare Awards including best film and best director, ten Star Screen Awards and sixteen IIFA awards.

The film also uses real inventions by little-known people in India's backyards. The brains behind the innovations were Remya Jose, a student from Kerala, who created the exercise-bicycle/washing-machine; Mohammad Idris, a barber from Meerut district in Uttar Pradesh, who invented a bicycle-powered horse clipper; and Jahangir Painter, a painter from Maharashtra, who made the scooter-powered flour mill. This film was remade in Tamil as Nanban (2012) which also received critical praise and commercial success. It has also been announced that there will be a Chinese remake of the film produced by Stephen Chow and that there are plans for a Hollywood remake produced in the United States.

Y Tu Mamá También (English: And Your Mother Too) is a 2001 Mexican drama film directed by Alfonso Cuarón, and co-written by Cuarón and his brother Carlos. The film is a coming-of-age story about two teenage boys taking a road trip with a woman in her late 20s; it stars Mexican actors Diego Luna and Gael García Bernal and Spanish actress Maribel Verdú in the leading roles. The film, a road movie, is set in 1999, against the backdrop of the political and economic realities of present-day Mexico, specifically at the end of the uninterrupted 71-year line of Mexican presidents from the Institutional Revolutionary Party, and the rise of the opposition headed by Vicente Fox.

The film is known for its controversial depiction of sexuality, which caused complications in the film's rating certificate in various countries. The film was released in English-speaking markets under its original Spanish title, rather than the literal translation to English, and opened in a limited release in the United States in 2002. In Mexico, the film took in $2.2 million in its first weekend in June 2001, making it the highest box office opening in Mexican cinema history. In the United States, the film went on to gain nominations for Best Original Screenplay at the Academy Awards, as well as a nomination for Best Foreign Language Film at the Golden Globe Awards that year.

The Seventh Seal (Swedish: Det sjunde inseglet) is a 1957 Swedish drama-fantasy film written and directed by Ingmar Bergman. Set in Sweden during the Black Death, it tells of the journey of a medieval knight (Max von Sydow) and a game of chess he plays with the personification of Death (Bengt Ekerot), who has come to take his life. Bergman developed the film from his own play Wood Painting. The title refers to a passage from the Book of Revelation, used both at the very start of the film, and again towards the end, beginning with the words "And when the Lamb had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour". Here the motif of silence refers to the "silence of God" which is a major theme of the film.

The film is considered a major classic of world cinema. It established Bergman as a world-renowned director and contains scenes which have become iconic through parodies and homages.

8½ (Italian title: Otto e mezzo) is a 1963 Italian-French comedy-drama film directed by Federico Fellini. Co-scripted by Fellini, Tullio Pinelli, Ennio Flaiano, and Brunello Rondi, it stars Marcello Mastroianni as Guido Anselmi, a famous Italian film director. Shot in black-and-white by cinematographer Gianni di Venanzo, the film features a soundtrack by Nino Rota with costume and set designs by Piero Gherardi.

Its title refers to Fellini's eight and a half films as a director. His previous directorial work consisted of six features, two short segments, and a collaboration with another director, Alberto Lattuada, the collaboration accounting for a "half" film.

8½ won two Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film and Best Costume Design (black-and-white). Acknowledged as an avant-garde film and a highly influential classic, it was among the top 10 on BFI The Top 50 Greatest Films of All Time, ranked third in a 2002 poll of film directors conducted by the British Film Institute[6] and is also listed on the Vatican's compilation of the 45 best films made before 1995, the 100th anniversary of cinema.

Z is a 1969 French language political thriller directed by Costa-Gavras, with a screenplay by Gavras and Jorge Semprún, based on the 1966 novel of the same name by Vassilis Vassilikos. The film presents a thinly fictionalized account of the events surrounding the assassination of democratic Greek politician Grigoris Lambrakis in 1963. With its satirical view of Greek politics, its dark sense of humor, and its downbeat ending, the film captures the outrage about the military dictatorship that ruled Greece at the time of its making.

Z stars Jean-Louis Trintignant as the investigating magistrate (an analogue of Christos Sartzetakis, who 22 years later was appointed President of Greece by democratically elected parliamentarians). International stars Yves Montand and Irene Papas also appear, but despite their star billing have very little screen time compared to the other principals. Jacques Perrin, who co-produced, plays a key role. The film's title refers to a popular Greek protest slogan (Greek: Ζει, IPA: [ˈzi]) meaning "he (Lambrakis) lives".

The film had a total of 3,952,913 admissions in France and was the 4th highest grossing film of the year. It was also the 12th highest grossing film of 1969 in the U.S. Z is also one of the few films to be nominated for both the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and Best Picture.

La Dolce Vita (Italian for "the sweet life" or "the good life") is a 1960 comedy-drama film written and directed by the critically acclaimed director Federico Fellini. The film follows Marcello Rubini, a journalist writing for gossip magazines, over seven days and nights on his journey through the "sweet life" of Rome in a fruitless search for love and happiness. La Dolce Vita won the Palme d'Or (Golden Palm) at the 1960 Cannes Film Festival[2] and the Oscar for Best Costumes.

Aguirre, the Wrath of God (German: Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes), known in the UK as Aguirre, Wrath of God, is a 1972 West German New Wave adventure art film written and directed by Werner Herzog. Klaus Kinski stars in the title role. The soundtrack was composed and performed by German progressive/Krautrock band Popol Vuh. The story follows the travels of Spanish soldier Lope de Aguirre, who leads a group of conquistadores down the Orinoco and Amazon River in South America in search of the legendary city of gold, El Dorado. Using a minimalist story and dialogue, the film creates a vision of madness and folly, counterpointed by the lush but unforgiving Amazonian jungle. Although based loosely on what is known of the historical figure of Aguirre, the film's story line is, as Herzog acknowledged years after the film's release, a work of imagination. Some of the people and situations may have been inspired by Gaspar de Carvajal's account of an earlier Amazonian expedition, although Carvajal was not on the historical voyage represented in the film. Other accounts state that the expedition went into the jungles but never returned to civilization.

Aguirre was the first of five collaborations between Herzog and the volatile Kinski. The director and the actor had differing views as to how the role should be played, and they clashed throughout the film's production, while Kinski's tantrums terrorized both the crew and the local natives who assisted the production. The production was shot entirely on location, and was fraught with difficulties. Filming took place in the Peruvian rainforest on the Amazon River during an arduous five-week period, shooting on tributaries of the Ucayali region. The cast and crew climbed mountains, cut through heavy vines to open routes to the various jungle locations, and rode treacherous river rapids on rafts built by natives.

Aguirre opened to widespread critical acclaim, and quickly developed a large international cult film following. It was given an extensive arthouse theatrical release in the United States in 1977, and remains one of the director's best known films. Several critics have declared the film a masterpiece, and it has appeared on Time magazine's list of "All Time 100 Best Films". Aguirre’s visual style and narrative elements had a strong influence on Francis Ford Coppola's 1979 film Apocalypse Now.

The Triplets of Belleville (French: Les Triplettes de Belleville) is a 2003 animated comedy film written and directed by Sylvain Chomet. It was released as Belleville Rendez-vous in the United Kingdom. The film is Chomet's first feature film and was an international co-production among companies in France, the United Kingdom, Belgium, and Canada.

The film features the voices of Michèle Caucheteux, Jean-Claude Donda, Michel Robin, and Monica Viegas; there is little dialogue, the majority of the film story being told through song and pantomime. It tells the story of Madame Souza, an elderly woman who goes on a quest to rescue her grandson Champion, a Tour de France cyclist, who has been kidnapped by the French mafia for gambling purposes and taken to the city of Belleville. She is joined by the Triplets of Belleville, music hall singers from the 1930s, whom she meets in the city, and her obese hound, Bruno.

The film was highly praised by audiences and critics for its unique style of animation. The film was nominated for two Academy Awards — Best Animated Feature and Best Original Song for "Belleville Rendez-vous". It was also screened out of competition (hors concours) at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival.