WATCH THE WORLD

Our goal is to open up the world to everyone through film. Everyone should travel if they can (the world is amazing), but it costs time and money which we don't always have. That's where FilmRoot comes in. We bring the world of films to your couch, so you can travel wherever you want to without the flight fees.

Use our World Map to find the best films from each country, choose a continent below to explore the best films from each continent, or simply scroll down to see our latest posts featuring films from around the world. Or, if you're up for a challenge, work your way up to the top of our Film Difficulty Rankings to become a World Film expert.

Latest Posts

LALIFF 2026 – A Community Celebration of Latinos in Film

Los Angeles is spoiled for film festivals. You can find film festivals representing communities from almost every part of the globe, from the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival to Outfest. LALIFF is one of the most popular film festivals in the city, and for good reason: it’s both the longest running and biggest Latino film festival in the country. If you missed it this year, make sure you grab a ticket this time next year!

The Experience

This year was the first time I’ve covered LALIFF in person, and wow, it was buzzing. Whilst you could see the excellent film programming in the virtual versions of the festival during the pandemic, the heart of the festival beats for building community in-person. I usually dread the long bus journey to the tourist-trap of Hollywood, but the LALIFF bar takeover, life-filled cinema lobby, and the screenings made everything feel more welcoming.

LALIFF stood out from other festivals I’ve covered because of this atmosphere. It was the first festival I’ve been to where the screenings received screams, whoops of excitement, and big prolonged applauding, making it feel like a true celebration of film. The atmosphere was created by the presence of the talent, and their passionate entourages of family and friends. It felt like LALIFF is a place where you could bring along anyone, no matter their age or how loud they are, making it feel like a valuable third space for the Los Angelino community.

The Films

As with previous editions, the feature-film programming was impressive. With only 17 feature films screening across the 4 days of the festival, the programmers focus on quality rather than quantity. However, despite the low number of films, the festival represented a wide range of countries, from the less-established film industries of Bolivia and Honduras to the ever present on the festival circuit film producing nations of Argentina and Mexico.

LALIFF 2026 also balanced genres well through their programming. Even in the 6 feature films we watched, there was a wide range of genres. Here’s how the feature films we saw stacked up:

The Condor Daughter (Bolivia)

The Condor Daughter is a beautifully shot tale of tradition standing against the threat of expanding globalization. You’ll be transported to the awesomely scenic mountains of the Bolivian Andes and thrown into the Quecha culture of the Totorani community. You’ll follow Clara, a young woman working with her adopted mother as a midwife, as she battles the allure of modernity and fame. Read the full review here.

Eva (Honduras)

An immensely warm-hearted film which breaks traditional gender roles by casting Endry Cardeño, a trans-woman, as Eva, a grandma, forced to take care of her granddaughter. As per the idiom; “it takes a village to raise a child,” we find a small tight-knit community in Tegucigalpa, the largest city in Central America, instead of one of the murder capitals of the world. Read the full review here.

The Red Hangar (Chile)

The Red Hangar is a dark, gripping thriller that depicts the Chilean coup of 1973 in real-time through the eyes of a patriotic air force captain. It’s based on a true story and brings you right into the fascistic chaos with hand-held cameras following the captain as he questions his integrity. This one is for fans of political thrillers and those seeking films which represent Chile’s fall into fascism in the 1970s.

A Place of Absence & How to Clean a House in 10 Easy Steps

A Place of Absence and How to Clean a House in 10 Easy Steps are two personal projects that explore the immigrant experience and grief through the eyes of daughters and their mothers. Both films bring color to lives that have been hidden and invite the audience to join the filmmakers on their journey to process the trauma and experiences that have shaped their families and lives.

Fifteen (Mexico)

For something completely different to the above look out for this high-school lesbian body-horror comedy. Fifteen seamlessly merges a wide range of genres to make something that unbelievably works. It’s fun, funny, and a refreshing change to everything mentioned above. It reminded me a lot of Good Manners and Medusa – two wildly inventive genre-bending Brazilian films.

The Shorts at LALIFF 2026

We also caught a shorts segment, which was the highlight of the festival. The theater was packed with talent and some huge entourages of friends and family, which made the viewing a real atmospheric treat. The films below were all refreshing and unique and well worth seeking out.

#Blessed: this comedy short about Juanita looking for the love of her life is filled with plenty of tongue-in-cheek silliness, vivid colors, and pop editing to make it a very fun watch.
Loco: a man in his late 20s/early 30s hilariously tries to navigate an existential crisis without his parents knowing; “you don’t need therapy, you only need Jesus”.
Marga en el DF: captures the difficulty of relationships and the warm vibes of Mexico City accompanied by Selena through the experiences of a pregnant lady.

LALIFF 2026 Footnote

LALIFF 2026 was one of the most lively film festivals I’ve experienced in Los Angeles owing to the amazing job it did of welcoming talent and building community. It also had a diverse range of high-quality film-programming and events too. So if you’re in Los Angeles, brave the trip to the TCL Chinese theater complex in Hollywood next year to celebrate Latino film.

Eva (Honduras) – LALIFF 2026

Eva Film Difficulty Ranking: 2

Whilst the drama of Eva is kicked off by tragedy, the film never feels tragic. This is an immensely warm-hearted film which breaks traditional gender roles by casting Endry Cardeño, a trans-woman, as Eva, a grandma forced to take care of her granddaughter. As per the idiom; “it takes a village to raise a child,” we find a small tight-knit community in Tegucigalpa, the largest city in Central America, instead of one of the murder capitals of the world.

From: Honduras, North America
Watch: IMDb
Next: The Awakening of the Ants, Amor y Frijoles, La Yuma

Eva Breakdown

In Eva, a trans-woman takes care of her granddaughter after the sudden death of her daughter-in-law. While processing grief, she tries to help her son connect emotionally to his daughter. Amid tensions, reproaches, and silence, Eva and her son embark on separate paths towards the reconstruction of their family bond and place within their community.

The combination of tragedy and tight-knit family and community make Eva a heart-warming addition to the Central American ‘hood film’ genre. Like the first ‘hood films’ from Los Angeles, such as Boyz n the Hood and Menace II Society, and along the lines of Amor Y Frijoles and La Yuma, Eva centers on the experiences of characters growing up in under-served communities in urban environments. It shows that community bonds are the key to surviving through tragic realities of the city in the face of limited government support. For Eva, there’s no evidence of public support for her adoption of her daughter-in-law. Instead, she builds connections with her in-laws, family, lovers, and customers, to turn the overwhelming city into a warm, mellow community.

It’s also wonderful to see nontraditional gender roles integrated so naturally in Eva. By casting Endry Cardeño as a trans, single grandmother, director William Reyes, normalizes trans people on film, trans people in family roles, and trans people as grandparents (especially pertinent as the life expectancy of trans-women in Tegucigalpa is just 32 according to the director William Reyes).

Look out for Eva‘s release in the coming months to catch a tender, poignant film that centers on family and community navigating tragedy.

Head to our LALIFF 2026 festival Hub for more reviews from LALIFF 2026.

The Condor Daughter (Bolivia) – LALIFF 2026

The Condor Daughter Film Difficulty Ranking: 2

From: Bolivia, South America
Watch: IMDb
Next: Utama, Whale Rider, The Secret of Kells

The Condor Daughter Breakdown

It starts the same way we all enter the world; in childbirth. Clara sings tenderly as a mother pushes her child into the world. The dimly lit room they’re in contrasts with the brightly lit hospital environments endemic to modernity. But the brightness comes in the next shot. As the baby arrives, the images cut to a still shot of the mountains, showing the incredible setting and linking the birth (and the communities lives) to Pachamama – mother nature. This link is built upon throughout the film with majestic shots of the mountains at sunrise and sunset to mark each day and cement the importance of nature to the community. When their crops fail and livestock die, it’s as if this connection has been disturbed, and they look to Clara’s flirtation with modernity as the culprit.

Clara has followed her adopted mother into the midwife profession. As one of the foundations of the cycle of life, midwifery is hugely important to maintaining tradition. Losing cultural control of midwifery destroys a pillar of the Quechua culture, opening up a space for encroaching globalization to exploit. The stakes are made clear in a scene in which a patient says she’s going to deliver her child in the government clinic because of the cash bonus and child benefits this entitles her to. Clara’s mother understands the threat of modernization, but Clara does not. Clara is drawn to the allure of the city and fame. However, like other indigenous films which explore the battle between tradition and modernity, parental inflexibility pushes their kids away. Clara’s personal struggle for freedom mirrors the communities battle to retain their own culture.

The strict parent and modernity vs. tradition narrative feels overly familiar – see Utama, Whale Rider, or even The Secret of Kells – but it’s always engrossing. However, the top reason to watch The Condor Daughter is for the stunning cinematography.

Head to our LALIFF 2026 festival Hub for more reviews from LALIFF 2026.

Project Poor Noriko – Highly Symbolic Images from Liechtenstein

Project Poor Noriko Film Difficulty Ranking: 3

As the fourth smallest country in Europe (ahead of the city states of San Marino, Monaco, and Vatican City), it’s not surprising to find that there isn’t a film industry in Liechtenstein. The capital Vaduz has less than 6,000 inhabitants – smaller than larger high schools in the U.S. – and the country is one of just two doubly-landlocked countries in the world (the other being Uzbekistan). Children of the Mountains (Kinder der Berge) is the country’s first and most well-known feature film (by relative standards), but finding it was too much of a challenge despite a recent restoration. Therefore, we’ve searched far and wide for an accessible and recent Liechtensteiner film, and bring you Project Poor Noriko, a student film from Yuna Hoch.

From: Liechtenstein, Europe
Watch: YouTube, IMDb
Next: The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, 300, The Color of Pomegranates

Project Poor Noriko – The Breakdown

Yuna Hoch divides Project Poor Noriko into four chapters which depict two young women breaking their bonds with a metaphorical society. Using highly-symbolic imagery and vivid, high-contrast shots, Hoch paints an elusive allegory of the modern day patriarchy.

Here’s how the plot of the short film plays out over the four short segments of dialogue-free images:

In chapter 1, ‘Chains of (in)justice,’ a young woman in lingerie wakes up in chains with bloody bodies around her and finds a hammer to break her chains and escape whilst on TV another young woman swings on a swing and makes a bracelet for her hockey stick.
In chapter 2, ‘Society’s Strings,’ a captive harpist plays, possibly calling to the recently escaped young woman from chapter 1.
In chapter 3, ‘Like beads on a rosary,’ sinister priests in robes tempt the young women of earlier chapters with apples and give them rosaries. Both women fight their creepy advances.
In chapter 4, ‘The Talisman of the Breaker,’ the harpist from chapter 2 removes her barbed wire chains and turns on her captor. The young women from chapters 1-3 break free and end the film in a natural environment with bright clothing.

Whilst the narrative is complicated by the editing between the three female characters (including the harpist), all three women share the same symbolic break from the metaphorical society which holds them captive. They all fight against patriarchal sexualization, personified in the creepy priests, the harpists’ captor, and in their lost childhood innocence. Project Poor Noriko’s message is a bit heavy-handed, but is demonstrative of a filmmaker unafraid to take big swings.

What Next?

The vivid colors and high contrast images reflects influences from both early German Expressionist silent films (see The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari) and the punchy graphic novel style images of Zach Snyder films such as 300 and Batman vs. Superman. If you’re looking for more hard-to-grasp imagery dominated film, you could try The Color of Pomegranates, the highly-visual experimental film from Armenian legend Sergei Parajanov.

Nosotros Los Pobres – Mexico’s Most Popular Film

Here we go! We’ve touched on the start of the Mexican Golden Age with Alla En El Rancho Grande and the stylistic zenith of the movement with Gabriel Figueroa’s cinematography in Enamorada; now it’s time for the most popular Mexican movie of all time: Nosotros Los Pobres. This is the film that every Mexican has seen.

From: Mexico, North America
Watch: IMDb, Internet Archive
Next: Enamorada, Alla en el Rancho Grande, Aventurera

So what’s new? Firstly, the nostalgia for past eras has been thrown out the window. There’s no more romanticized ranch life of Alla En El Rancho Grande or romanticized Mexican Revolution of Enamorada. These periods, as well as the indigenous idolatry of Maria Candelaria and Flor Silvestre, have been traded for the present day. Nosotros Los Pobres takes place in the city and features many everyday characters. This was the first major film that Mexican audiences saw themselves on the screen. The urban environment and tragedy-stricken characters resonated strongly with widespread experiences of the working class. Through the melodrama, audiences could process their trauma and gather around a unified Mexican identity, which was still being constructed in post-revolutionary Mexico.

A Reflection of modern mexico

The setting isn’t pretty. The city of Nosotros los Pobres doesn’t have the open spaces of the ranch or the quaint small-town feel of Cholula. Instead, people live so close together that they can hold conversations with their neighbors through their windows. The cramped contemporary urban environment would have been familiar to Mexican audiences in the city, at a time when the country was rapidly urbanizing. Following the Mexican Revolution and Second World War, the citizens were drawn to the quickly expanding metropolis of Mexico City, trading living space for work opportunities. Following this migration, more and more Mexican films were set in the city, such as the Rumberas of the late 1940s and 1950s (see Aventurera or Victims of Sin) and Bunuel’s Los Olvidados (1950).

The modern, working-class characters of Nosotros los Pobres were also more recognizable to Mexican audiences. Their sing-song, unpretentious speech reflected how most Mexicans spoke (and even served as the comedic punch in one of the whistle-led musical numbers), making them instantly identifiable. Pepe el Toro, played by superstar singer Pedro Infante, was an every-man rolling with the punches of poverty. His character reinforces the Mexican male archetype, as per Carlos Monsivais, with a character ‘simultaneously brave, generous, romantic, and cruel,’ a fierce family man, always ready to defend those he love. Pepe el Toro was more rounded than the virtuous men in Maria Candelaria and Alla en el Rancho Grande. He lived through the same poverty-stemming problems as his viewers, but fought it wherever he could, even if that landed him in trouble.

Unlike Alla en el Rancho Grande and Enamorada, which were both set in romanticized past, the cramped urban spaces and identifiable characters reflected contemporary Mexico. Through the modern setting and working-class characters, Nosotros los Pobres helped to continue building Mexican identity upon the foundations of the romanticized past with the help of melodrama.

Developing Mexican Identity through Melodrama

It’s easy to forget that Mexico is a hugely diverse country. With 63 official languages and many distinct cultures within it’s borders, building national unity has been one of the country’s success stories. The Mexican Golden Age was a crucial part of uniting the people within Mexico’s borders around a common identity. Films like Alla en el Rancho Grande and Enamorada constructed a romanticized past for people to look back on (instead of remembering it’s brutality), and gave the people pride in Mexican culture through the iconic dress and music. But the people needed spirit to get through the trauma of a rapidly modernizing country. This was just the job for melodrama.

So what is melodrama? According to Wikipedia, it’s an exaggerated version of drama, in which plot, typically sensationalized for a strong emotional appeal, takes precedence over detailed characterization. Whilst ‘melodramas’ have acquired a bad reputation for work that lacks subtlety and character development, the Mexican Golden Age films used it as a vehicle to guide their viewers.

Nosotros los Pobres ends with the quote ‘se sufre… pero se aprende’ (one suffers… but one learns) plastered to the back of a wagon. This comes *spoiler alert* after multiple surprise deaths, an eviction, and injustices. Seeing this after all the exaggerated tragedy is meant to encourage the audience to persevere through the turbulence of modern Mexico. It gives them a fictional space to process their real-life traumas resulting from the rapid urbanization of Mexico and widespread social displacement. Unlike later films such as Los Olvidados in which the characters are forgotten in a hopeless ending, the characters of Nosotros los Pobres (and it’s audience) learn to suffer with dignity. It serves to show that although we may be poor, we have love, we have dignity, we have a country that we can be proud of.

The melodrama celebrated the suffering of poverty and ennobled the working class. It showed audiences that they were not alone by uniting them with universal heroes to follow and hope for the future

What Next?

If you started here, head back in time to the start of the Mexican Golden Age with Alla en el Rancho Grande and admire it’s artistic zenith with Enamorada.

Looking forward, witness the rise of the rumbera genre, which built seedier urban environments off the back of the popularity of Cuban rumba rhythms with films such as Aventurera and Victims of Sin. Or view Luis Bunuel’s Los Olvidados as a counter-program to the hope and didactic messages of Nosotros los Pobres.