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

An Interview with Greg Laemmle, President of Laemmle Theaters

Have you ever wondered what it is like to run an art-house theater chain in the film capital of the world? Here’s our conversation with Greg Laemmle, the President of Laemmle Theaters, a family owned business that shows art, international, and independent films in Los Angeles.

Great to meet you Greg! How did you get into film distribution?

I went off to college at Berkeley to study Marine Biology, which is not best suited for the film business, but at the time there was still a thriving repertory film circuit with three or four theaters in town and film societies. My father gave me a pass to the UC Theater, operated by Landmark, and I figured that if I could get my studying done during the course of the day that would leave me free in the evening to see movies. I caught up on a lot of movies and realized how much I loved film. I still have that degree in marine biology, but shortly after that I realized that I would be moving in the direction of the family business.

Was your father, Robert Laemmle running the business when you were deciding?

Yeah, my dad was running it at the time whilst my grandparents were still alive. I was doing a few other jobs coming out of college but my grandmother got upset and pulled me into the theaters.

What do you like most about the job. It sounds like you’re doing everything, including picking the movies and managing the distributor relationships?

It’s kind of how we’ve always done it. It’s probably not the smartest thing, but I really love seeing the movies, working with the distributors, figuring out what to play and where to play it, and how best to get an audience to see it. Growing up working in the theaters, you see first-hand the impact that movies have on the faces of people coming out of the auditorium. So that idea of sharing and exposing people to something is really quite powerful and enjoyable.

Also, as we’ve gotten into the business, I’ve enjoyed working with communities to develop arts and entertainment districts. Asking how a movie theater fits into that world? How does Los Angeles evolve as a community? Figuring out where people are going, spending their leisure time, and how they are getting around. All those kinds of things. Running a Theater chain is a full-fledged opportunity to engage in urban development and the role the arts play in it.

A few of your theaters, such as the Monica Center and Royal are very close to other theaters. Do you think it is better to have more theaters in your area?

It’s a fine line. Sometimes you want some other theaters to help create the movie-going audience. The complexes we are building are not that large or historically built so at some level you know you’re going to be sharing the audience. You have to ask how many screens does it take to provide what the community wants. For example, we’re the only theater in Claremont. With only 5 screens there, it was difficult as there was always someone who was asking why we weren’t playing films x, y, or z. So that indicates a need for a higher number of screens in Claremont. In the current environment where there is a reduced number of commercial films coming from the major studios post-pandemic, you see the big movie theater chains such as AMC playing more art films, which becomes more competition for us. I don’t know if there is a magic number. If there are 12 screens in the community, it depends on how they’re programmed. In those kinds of situations, if that theater is ignoring the art films that are out there, then there is a need for something more.

The Laemmle Theaters are synonymous with art-house, independent, and international films. Why was this lane picked and why have you stuck with it?

It was a niche that was available. If you were not able to play commercial films, which may have been more lucrative, you were looking around to see what you could play. From a business standpoint, if you have an opportunity to play art and foreign films that other people are not playing, or play them in an area where they’re not being seen, or just by making a commitment to playing those types of films and creating an audience for them that becomes a business decision. Did that decision happen to mesh with a preference for those type of films; absolutely. I don’t dislike Hollywood films, but there is a world of cinema out there and being able to bring it all to Los Angeles became good business for us.

Well, it goes up and down. There are a lot of factors. It’s not that audiences have soured on these types of films, but we’re dealing with certain challenges coming out of the pandemic that are to a certain degree outside of our control.

I thought you navigated the pandemic well. You were quick to set up the Virtual Cinema which allowed an audience to continue to watch international and independent films. What was your perspective on the Virtual Cinema? Did it help or was the benefit very minute?

Very minute due to complicated rights issues in streaming. As much as distributors wanted to support our activity, they weren’t able to or there were competitive pressures. The Virtual Cinema was an opportunity to stay engaged with our customers about film but the numbers weren’t significant. In the post-pandemic period, that fell off even more and we were faced with a challenge to get people back in the movie theaters, so we decided to stop taking the content online. It’s not that it was losing a ton of money, but it wasn’t making much money and was taking energy away from what we really wanted to do which was getting people back in the movie theaters.

There are still challenges right now. Infection numbers are currently climbing and there is an audience that is very scared of getting sick. We’re seeing our audience change as a result. The older audience that used to be the most reliable for supporting art-house cinema, is still not back and may not come back. This is impacting the kind of films distributors are wanting to support theatrically. This will have an impact on the kind of films that get made.

Local film criticism has also declined. We’re sympathetic as local papers have their challenges too but it has severely impacted the ability of people to find out through independent sources what is playing and worth seeing. Obviously you can go on our website to see what we’re playing, but if you’re not the type of person that goes to websites, how are you getting that information about what is playing. It used to be that when you would open the Friday paper, you could see half a dozen or more film reviews of everything opening that day in Los Angeles and you could read about films you hadn’t heard about and potentially decide to watch that movie. When you are searching for reviews on Rotten Tomatoes or other sites, the assumption is that you are searching because you know what you are looking for and the process of discovering smaller films is made more difficult.

Apps like Letterboxd help but require a degree of technical comfort to understand that if you rate the films you’ve seen, the algorithm will start suggesting other films that you might like, and you will find out about that small Romanian film because you liked another Romanian film. A certain audience understands this and another does not. We need to build connections with all types of audiences and it’s taking longer than we would like. It’s partly because we’re still not in an environment where we’re entirely done with the shocks of everything.

Is the younger audience back to pre-pandemic levels?

It has recovered quicker and arguably accelerated. You can see that in the numbers – some theaters are doing as much business or more than they did before due to a younger demographic and the films we program there. The numbers are just super strong. Poor Things doing as much business as The Favorite is a testament of this. The younger audience is back and stronger than ever and hungrier to see these types of films.

Does this impact how you program your theaters?

It impacts distributor decisions about which films to acquire, how to support those films, and which way to release them. If distributors are not acquiring or supporting those films in the way that they’re used to it has a downstream impact. Print advertising has declined. I don’t want to sound like a Luddite or a person who’s not moving on, but there were lots of audiences that did respond to print advertising because they were not necessarily being reached in any other way and you could argue that this audience no longer knows what is playing or they’re not being informed through that manner that was most familiar to them. How do you reach that audience? Can you reach that audience? What are the other means of doing that? It’s not that this audience is totally gone, but the numbers clearly show that it’s only back to a certain degree.

How do you find all of the films that you program at the Laemmle Theaters?

It is generally distributors bringing films to us. I wish I had time to do attend more film festivals, but I try to pay attention to what is playing at the major festivals and networking with festival programmers and exhibitors. We tend to be very open to working directly with producers, but it does mean that they have to come to us and present something and we’ll figure out how to play it. If your film is not acquired by a distributor, it’s not over, but you have to take your film hat off and put your film seller hat on and do that yourself

The distributors that have already acquired the films use the festivals to build word of mouth. Even with the Palme d’Or, Sean Baker’s Anora will not have the built in awareness across the general population that Deadpool & Wolverine has, and certainly can’t afford to spend as much, so savvy distributors will use every step they can to build awareness, word of mouth, so that when the film is finally put to commercial release, it has a leg up towards finding an audience and getting people to see it. They will use things that come up during the course of the release to their advantage, such as reviews, nominations, and top 10 lists, to continue to build awareness. When successfully managed, you get films like Anatomy of a Fall playing in movie theaters for up to six months.

The quality of the film ultimately speaks to an audience, but getting an audience in to see the films is important and the marketing helps.

What do you like least about running Laemmle Theaters?

It’s very challenging in this environment, but nothing makes me want to quit. I love what I’m doing. It’s just being able to find a way from challenge to success. Sometimes that’s more difficult than other times. But I ultimately believe in what we do and that it’s of value to the public, and the general public generally expresses their affection that way in terms of support and attendance. When you’re in an environment that’s in flux, it’s not always possible to pivot as quickly as you want, you have leases, facilities and other things to manage. In many cases it requires an amazing degree of patience to see things turn around. There’s not a lot that I don’t like. Some things are harder than others, that’s all.

Thanks so much for your time! One last question. I know from Only in Theaters that you’ve moved to Seattle. How is the Cinema culture in Seattle?

There’s a terrific art house scene in Seattle where I’m now living. The Seattle International Film Festival runs year round programming at four locations: the Cinerama theater, the uptown, the civic center and the Egyptian. You also have the grand illusion, the northwest film forum so there is a number of niche art house operators in the area that do terrific stuff, so I’m very fortunate to be able to access that.

For more insight into the operation of Laemmle Theaters, watch Raphael Sbarge’s documentary Only in Theaters. You can also catch Inside the Arthouse a new video podcast from Greg Laemmle and Raphael Sbarge highlighting new releases from August 28th.

Sirocco and the Kingdom of the Winds (France)

By Sebastian Torrelio

In the sparsest year for animation in some time, France has quietly put out what has been highlighted by the press as an “oddity.” Sirocco and the Kingdom of the Winds sports Juliette & Carmen, two young sisters staying with their neighbor Agnés for a spontaneous sleepover. Upon the first recess of supervision, they stumble into one of Agnés’ authored children’s books, are re-imagined as human-sized cats and seized by fantastically unevolved creatures. Within the book’s confinement they are assisted by Selma, an avian opera singer, who has connections to both the author’s past and to the most powerful figure in the land, the air-bound and unpredictable magician Sirocco.

Chieux’s Annecy Audience Award-winning feature is as simple as the art-house form ever presents itself, a fairy tale guided by so many instantaneous decisions the room to breathe compresses just short of heart-stopping. As Juliette and Carmen stumble into their neighbor’s tales, so does curiosity bite their new cat-like instincts near immediately, finding them in various states of ownership, imprisonment, freedom, and heroic resplendence within as little as 30 minutes of runtime. Nothing about Sirocco is hard to follow, a credit to Chieux’s knack for embedding a child’s perspective into his wonderland of immense proportions, yet the story’s constant moving target of new objectives does hinder its otherwise easygoing nature. Even in the opening minutes, the rug is pulled out by a change of perspective, the protagonist quickly redirected from a sleepy Agnés to the children’s hurricane of energy.

For what may prove more divisive in the Kingdom of Winds is Chieux’s choice of art-style. Sirocco is not crude-looking, per se, but intentionally rough and sparse in between the lines. Layers of atmosphere and Earthly settings in Selma’s world are rendered in light, ambient colors, near nothing to saturation, over layers of even further comparable color swatches. The character designs, aside from Selma herself, are rather spare – crowds of minions, flying beasts and assistants all with a bulb-like rounded figure, clone-like blobs fighting frenetic stick-limbed beings. Even the first fantastical character Juliette and Carmen encounter, a small wooden toy, humorously reminded me of a cheap Adult Swim character. Still, many will find the minimalism of anything presented at two dimensional-face value as charming these days.

Far and away, Sirroco’s biggest asset is its score – classical and orchestral, booming in its symphony, particularly in the theatrical setting it will get minimal playtime for in the United States. For all its public anime comparisons, the music of Sirocco is what ties it closest to recent Studio Ghibli efforts, a bountiful mixture of adventure and climactic overture to soundtrack the sights of Selma’s overhead journey. French vocalist Célia Kameni provides Selma’s singing voice, a baroque operatic performance that stuns in its un-poplike nature, her gorgeous, sustained notes an instrument in their own right.

If this review did not imply otherwise, Selma’s very existence is the only thing that holds Sirocco together as a story. Strong and goodhearted, but not without emotion, she keeps the value of a more considered, budgetary (real world) animation intact while engaging with naivete at every plot turn. Her most sagely words of wisdom echo what Chieux may have thought bringing her into this world: “Such a shame. The audience gets to see what artists they want. But the artists do not get to choose their audience.” With its bounty of unrestrained whimsy, Sirocco will be buried under other European efforts into the second half of this year, where it will advocate on its own modern merits for adolescent viewing attention. It should nevertheless not go unnoticed – many of life’s most pleasant joys are better stumbled upon, or into, anyway.

Seen at Laemmle Royal, Los Angeles

Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World

Do Not Expect Too Much for the End of the World

Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World film difficulty Ranking: 4

Radu Jude is no stranger to controversy or satirizing contemporary society. His previous feature, the Golden Bear winning Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn, took aim at sexism, nationalism, and consumerism with COVID-19 and sex as a backdrop. Before that, he highlighted his country’s hidden involvement in the holocaust in I Do Not Care if we Go Down in History as Barbarians. Both of these films packed a strong punch of humor and cynicism, but Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World is his most potent critique of the world today and a movie that will define the 2020s for later generations.

From: Romania, Europe
Watch: IMDb, Just Watch
Next: Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn, No Bears, Sorry to Bother You

The Breakdown

Don’t expect Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World to be an easy watch. Unless you’re familiar with Radu Jude’s recent films, you might be confused why this film keeps cutting to an old communist-era Romanian film about a female taxi driver or why we spend the majority of the central narrative literally stuck in traffic. Don’t expect a resolution from the side-narratives either. All of the threads might seem random but they all contribute to the bleak and cynical tapestry of the modern world that Radu Jude creates.

You might be thinking; “why would I want to watch a cynical tapestry of the modern world? The world is bleak enough right now.” To which we say; “fear not, you will have a guide in the madness.” Ilinca Manolache’s Angela is like Virgil in Dante’s Inferno. She’ll show us the hellish signs of late-stage capitalism – wealth inequality, corporate indifference, virtue signalling – and fiercely confront them with her dark humor. She’s integral to Jude’s critique of modern life as her humor makes it digestible and more like a bad dream than a shameful reality.

You might also be thinking; “why does Jude keep cutting to an old Community-era Romanian film?” The film in question is Angela merge mai departe, shot during Nicolae Ceaușescu’s authoritarian rule. It follows a female taxi driver as she ferries a range of male passengers around the city. The film highlights the danger of being a woman – she’s caught eyeing a wrench to use as a potential defense against one passenger – and is on the receiving end of leering eyes of men on the street, which Jude intentionally shows in slow motion. But her experiences are not significantly different to that which modern Angela faces. By including this communist-era film within Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World, Jude forces us to compare the two eras. Ultimately, and depressingly, life under the dictatorship appears no worse than today. You might even interpret the 80s as better. For one, it’s shot in color vs. the monochrome of modernity so it looks warmer, and secondly 80s Angela is free from corporate exploitation.

Conclusion

Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World is an era defining film. It’s bleak tapestry of the modern world marks a new low-point in Romanian (and modern capitalist) society. Just like Dante’s Inferno, we’re guided with dark humor through the hell of modernity and left to ponder how we got here.

La Chimera (Italy) – Combining Time-Travel with Classic Cinema

La Chimera Film Difficulty Ranking: 3

Time-travel is a key ingredient of some of Hollywood’s biggest blockbusters. It holds an unnatural power to change the future and the past, adding the driving plot behind the Back to the Future and Terminator series from the 1980s and a few modern Christopher Nolan films. Over in Italy, Alice Rohrwacher has mastered the ability to use time-travel naturally. Instead of using it as the driving force of the plot and drama, it is the icing on the cake. She has combined time-travel with wholly Italian influences; De Sica’s Neo-realism and Fellini’s Surrealism, to make her own fantastic style.

From: Italy, Europe
Watch: Trailer, JustWatch
Next: Happy as Lazzaro, First Cow, Caro Diario

La Chimera – The Breakdown

La Chimera starts with a dream. Sepia-tinted snippets of a woman in a garden evokes the feeling of warm nostalgia. The dream is interrupted by a train conductor asking for tickets, which introduces us to our dreamer: Arthur, played by Josh O’Connor. He picks out a very old looking train ticket the size of a postcard and his train-cabin-mates pick up on his unusual accent and ask where he comes from. “Far,” is his one-worded answer, coding the mystery of his character.

So who is Arthur, and has he come from another era? He doesn’t reveal anything obvious on the train. It’s not clear where he’s going or coming from, and as per his one-worded answer in the paragraph above, we don’t know who he is or where he is from either. A few puzzle pieces are inferred from the following scenes, but these do not give us a complete picture. We find out that:

He’s English
He’s been in jail – likely as the fall guy for a troubadour group of associates
He’s looking for a woman
He has a special skill at finding treasures from the past

Whilst these attributes build his character, they also all add to his mysteriousness by leading to new questions:

Why is an Englishman in rural Italy with a group of grave-robbers?
What led to his capture and was he turned in?
Who is he looking for and what happened to them?
How did he get his supernatural skill?

This mystery makes him appear like he’s been picked up from another world and time and plonked into rural Italy.

Time-travel has popped up before in Alice Rohrwacher’s films. In her previous feature, Happy as Lazzaro, the titular character falls from a great height, blacks out, and reappears in a modern era, portaling from his previous life in feudal Italy. Whilst the time-travel is more metaphorical than literal, Rohrwacher makes the jump more believable by situating Lazzaro (the lead character) in a location stuck in the past; a small rural Italian town with old, decaying houses, no modern infrastructure, and no signs of modern technology, before transporting him to the modern city. The town that Arthur finds himself in is exactly the same setting as Lazzaro’s decaying town. His house is a DIY shack on the outside of the town wall, he visits the crumbling house of his lost lover, and electronic screens and electricity itself are practically non-existent. This setting, combined with Arthur’s mystery makes viewers accustomed to Rohrwacher’s films feel like Arthur is from another era and place, and has got lost in old-town Italy whilst searching for his lost love.

Conclusion

If the time-travel and mystery haven’t already sold you on watching La Chimera, know that watching La Chimera is like watching a bubbling pot of Italian Cinema influences whilst witnessing a new talent find their stylistic voice. There’s pieces of De Sica’s neo-realism in the poverty-stricken characters and tough world they exist in, fragments of Antonioni’s mood-driven mystery in their vague backgrounds and existence, and a large chunk of Fellini’s surrealism and panache in the bombastic scenes and cinematic magic. Rohrwacher in La Chimera manages to bring together all these influences whilst building on the natural time-travel of Happy as Lazzaro, forming her own style from the embers of the Italian classics.

Best International Films of 2023 – From South Africa to Japan

Here’s our (very delayed) list of the best international films of 2023. One big learning from 2023 is that having two kids under 3 in the household is not conducive to a lot of film watching. This will probably change in the not too distant future, but until then, we’re focusing on a top 20 instead of a top 30.

The list captures films from 5 continents (sorry Australasia) and features a lot of recognizable names as film festivals and distributors have returned to films that attract a wider range of film fans. Some of these films are brilliant – the returns of Aki Kaurismaki and Hayao Miyazaki are most welcome and there are also returns for less established names, such as Lila Aviles and Rebecca Zlotowski. In among are a few debuts, including an interesting and highly personal documentary from Milisuthando Bongela. We’re hoping to find more debut filmmakers in 2024 amidst some highly anticipated international releases from Mati Diop, Abderrahmane Sissako, Alonzo Ruizpalacios, and Victor Kossakovsky.

20 Best International Films of 2023

20. Milisuthando (South Africa)

Set in the past, present, and future of South Africa, Milisuthando is a memory-driven documentary that captures the South African experience with intimacy. Like the journal films of Jonas Mekas, it captures the feeling of a generation trying to put together the pieces of its past. In this case, an exploration of growing up through major political/historical events as South Africa ended apartheid.

19. Rimini (Austria)

Richie Bravo, once a ‘successful’ Schlager singer and ladies man, is now a middle aged hustler funded by half-filled restaurant concerts and prostitution. His character is a hilarious leftover from the easy-going 90s that just doesn’t fit in todays world. Whilst he assumes a free-loving Italian identity – maybe to counter his Dad’s Nazi days – he outwardly disdains the immigrants/refugees in the background. He’s a mess – but at least a big hilariously harmless one.

18. Bobi Wine: The People’s President (Uganda)

The inspiring leader battling political oppression road-show stops in Uganda after touring Russia (Navalny) and Kenya (Softie). In this documentary, our leader (Bobi Wine), is not just battling one of the worlds longest serving dictators, but continuing to release catchy reggae music. His fierce spirit and willingness to sacrifice himself for his country make this a captivating but difficult watch.

17. Other People’s Children (France)

A teacher full of life falls in love with Ali and grows close to his 4-year-old daughter, Leila. She becomes like a mother to her, provoking a desire for a family of her own. A rarely considered relationship and some great performances, makes Other People’s Children feel very touching and genuine.

16. The Blue Caftan (Morocco)

Touzani’s second feature follows the same style, setting, and structure as her first (Adam). It’s also filmed in close ups and a few mid distance shots to create a strong intimacy between the audience and her characters. The Moroccan setting is obvious but is subtly established through the close distance shots – we never see more than a few meters of streets, the tailor shop, or the bathhouse. Whilst many elements of the story follow Touzani’s debut, The Blue Caftan is another brilliantly warm portrayal of the battle between loyalty, friendship and love.

15. Godzilla: Minus One (Japan)

The 2024 Academy Award winner for Best Visual Effects is one of the most epic films of 2023. Without Godzilla, the film might resemble the overly patriotic notes of the new Chinese blockbusters a bit too closely. With Godzilla, it helps to reinforce the apocalyptic feeling of a country destroyed by World War 2 – not just by the nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but also by the carpet bombing of Tokyo where this film is set.

14. The Buriti Flower (Brazil)

2022 saw the release of National Geographic’s documentary The Territory, which followed the plight of indigenous people in the Brazilian rainforest. Whilst the documentary won awards for its coverage of deforestation and violence against indigenous people, The Buriti Flower tells it better. The Buriti Flower features the indigenous protagonists instead of processing their language and voices through mediators. In doing so, the Krahô are given a political voice and agency within their community and on the national scale.

13. City of Wind (Mongolia)

City of Wind covers the classic ‘tradition vs. modernity’ trope pretty well through its high-school coming-of-age romance. The setting stands out – Ulaanbaatar – which combines a mass of urban development with its rural, undeveloped outskirts, visualizing the encroaching development on tradition. Tradition is represented in a young shaman, balancing school with his cultural role as a ‘modern’ woman pulls him out of his focused life and into modernity. Will he or won’t he be the end of his cultural lineage?

12. Falcon Lake (Canada)

If there’s a genre that has a higher chance of landing on my best-of-the-year list than any other, it’s the summer vacation romance. The genre, especially when shot with grainy footage, always evokes a nostalgia for summer holidays filled with boredom-provoked spontaneity. Falcon Lake captures the summer vibes well and adds a layer of mystery fueled by lake based horror films.

11. Passages (France)

If a movie features Franz Rogowski, you can assume the acting is going to be worth watching, and Passages is no exception. He’s joined by a commanding Ben Wishaw and a naive Adele Exarchopoulos to make an electric love triangle that moves at Tomas/Rogowski’s whim.

10. Unrest (Switzerland)

It’s not easy to describe or categorize Unrest. It’s not a documentary, but it is too realistic to be a drama. The pacing feels closest to slow film, but with a unique historic lens that captures an era in the Industrial Revolution where everything has become farcically dictated by clock time (using different clocks – train, factory, home). The conflict between these clocks triggers a mini anarchist stand within a watch making factory in the Swiss mountains.

9. Chile 76 (Chile)

Chile 76 treads the same ground as a plethora of Chilean and Argentinian films which also cover their respective police states in the second half of the 20th Century. The red + blue paint scene is brilliantly memorable (if not a bit obvious), but this film stands out for its ability to drive anxiety like none of the films that preceded it. Thanks to a disruptive soundtrack, which turns mundane everyday scenes into ominously paranoid ones, we’re never allowed to settle.

8. Return to Seoul (France/South Korea)

Don’t even think about mentioning adoption or biological parents to Freddie. Perhaps the switch moments are a bit obvious, but Park Ji-Min flips her character brilliantly every time they come up. She plays the unpredictable character scarily – see Alfredo Castro in Pablo Larrains Tony Manero – or even a more edgy version of Renate Reinsve’s Julie in Worst Person in the World. But it’s not all about the performance, as the script keeps us invested in the growing identity crisis with each time-jump.

7. Fallen Leaves (Finland)

There’s no better film to break the anxiety-inducing Chile 76 and Return to Seoul than Fallen Leaves. It’s a beautifully simple love story featuring two down-to-earth lead characters, shot in an apparently ordinary style. Aki Kaurismaki makes filmmaking look easy.

6. Full Time (France)

Strap in for an everyday thrill ride. In Full Time, Eric Gravel turns managing hotel rooms into a high-octane thriller through frantic editing. The camera, like the lead actress, is always on the move creating anxiety-inducing cinema that will likely make you feel that your job and daily commute are a breeze.

5. Four Daughters (Tunisia)

Kaouther Ben Hania is back with more drama. Unlike her previous film, The Man Who Sold His Skin, Four Daughters is grounded in reality. Its authenticity and intimacy is granted by Olfa and her two daughters, who tell their family story with the help of actors playing their lost sisters within the confines of their four walls. Ben Hania encourages her cast to re-enact past trauma, like The Act of Killing, but on a more intimate scale, to create one of the most affecting movies of the year.

4. Rotting in the Sun (Mexico)

The best meta-comedy of the year, Rotting in the Sun features Sebastian Silva and Jordan Firstman playing satirized versions of themselves. It somehow manages to cross partying on gay nudist beaches with the mundanity of housework in Mexico City to create a film which will keep you guessing. It’s the most original film you’ll see from 2023.

3. The Delinquents (Argentina)

Argentina is the home of long, cosy, trivial mysteries. Our 2023 entry follows in the vein of El Pampero Cine, whose Trenque Lauquen was our favorite film of 2022. The Delinquents follows the stories of two men involved in a bank heist to escape unfulfilled lives as bank clerks. Their journeys take us to prison in remote Argentina, a beautiful riverside picnic spot, and famous pizza spots in Buenos Aires. If you have time for some indulgent storytelling – this is your best choice from 2023.

2. Totem (Mexico)

5 years after The Chambermaid and Lila Aviles is back with another affecting Mexico City film. This one takes place entirely within the confines of seven-year-old Sol’s family house as the family gets ready for a birthday party. Like the brilliance of Mira Nair’s Monsoon Wedding, Totem throws us into a family event and forces us to make ourselves comfortable. As we (the viewers) immerse ourselves in the family, the film becomes more and more emotional as the seriousness of the occasion becomes apparent.

1. The Boy And The Heron (Japan)

Miyazaki is back, and this one feels like a departing film as it makes peace with all the existential angst of his previous films. It also comes to terms with a legacy that may not be continued. It’s a magnificent end to an incredible career and gives us all one more chance to enjoy his magic. This is one of his best, and will continue to grow in the next few decades.

HONORABLE MENTIONS FOR BEST INTERNATIONAL FILMS OF 2023:

Mami Wata (Nigeria), Smoking Causes Coughing (France), Suzume (Japan), The Eight Mountains (Italy), Godland (Iceland), Tiger Stripes (Indonesia), Society of the Snow (Chile), Terrestrial Verses (Iran), Los Colonos (Chile), El Conde (Chile)

If you think we’ve missed a film from a list that you think is one of the best international films of 2023, please get in touch on Twitter or by email.