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

Tragic Jungle (Selva trágica) – AFI Fest 2020

Full disclosure: I’m a sucker for jungle movies like this. Films where the jungle slowly ebbs away at the ego of each character until it merges with the forest and they disappear. Embrace of the Serpent, Apocalypse Now, and The Mercy of the Jungle are three great examples of this. In each of these films, the jungle is expansive and labyrinthine. As every part of it looks the same, it’s easy to see how you can begin to lose track of place and time – did I pass this tree 15 minutes ago, this rock looks familiar, etc. And once you’ve lost your place in time, the jungle starts to consume you, slowly dissolving your ego away.

Tragic Jungle stands out from the bunch in bringing the jungle to life. It uses the sounds of the Howler Monkey and Jaguar to turn it into a threatening physical entity. Their constant roars and grumbles occupying the sonic space are unnerving. The unease is further emphasized by the videos of the two animals mixed in with the main narrative. It makes it feel like the animals are just around the corner, waiting for the inevitable demise of the human protagonists. This is their home, and the Director, Yulene Olaizola, makes that clear.

The only character that seems comfortable in the jungle is the anonymous runaway, a young black Belizean woman chased across the River Hondo into Mexico by her hunters. It’s not clear if she’s escaped the gun of her hunter or not. But once she appears to a group of Mexican rubber harvesters out of the forest, she assumes her role as the Ixtabay woman, a legendary Mayan demon that appears from the forest to lure men to their deaths with her beauty. From this point, she’s completely silent among her new captors. However, her stoical face and slight smile to all the men that approach her, make it appear that she’s always in control.

Her character is exoticized by the Mexican rubber harvesters because of her race. Unlike them, who are a mix of Mexican mestizo and Mexican indigenous heritages, she is a black creole Belizean woman. She’s as unfamiliar to them as the jungle they’re working in, so it’s not surprising that they link her appearance to the supernatural.

Her exoticization also reflects the erasure of Afro-Mexicans from contemporary and historical Mexico. In using a Black creole woman from Belize as the Ixtabay woman, Tragic Jungle further ‘others’ the Black creole women of Mexico. It portrays Blackness as something exotic and unfamiliar to the Mexican characters of both indigenous and mixed Spanish and indigenous backgrounds, which enforces the foreignness of Blackness in Mexico despite it’s own Afro-Mexican community and links to African slavery. Because the Black characters are not Mexican, because they are exoticized and made to feel foreign, and because of the context of historical and present erasure of Afro-Mexicans in Mexico that is slowly gaining recognition, Tragic Jungle contributes to the systematic erasure of Blackness in Mexico.

Head to our AFI Fest Hub for more reviews and short films from AFI Fest 2020.

Notturno – AFI Fest 2020

Notturno is a beautifully shot documentary. It’s clear that each shot has been carefully set up and framed. For example, the shots of the first protagonist of the documentary, a man traveling to his hidden canoe to go hunting, are incredibly well lit in low light. He paddles out into the darkness with the reds of the night sky burning in the background. And that’s right after the shots of him on his motorbike riding to the lake, with oil rigs spurting flames behind him. This film is full of incredible images of the borderlands between Syria, Iraq, Kurdistan, and Lebanon.

However, because it’s so well shot, the documentary kind of feels a bit staged. Everything shot feels like it has been planned. It feels like the director, Gianfranco Rosi, has asked the people he’s shooting to wait for him to set up the camera before they move around, as his camera captures them so perfectly from a distance. He seems to know where they’re going. So even if it’s not that obvious, you can feel the faint presence of the director slightly disrupting their lives which makes Notturno feel less natural.

Because you can feel the director’s gaze, Notturno also feels a bit exploitative at times. The shots of poverty and buildings in ruin are what western eyes expect to see from the war torn Middle East. These images are complemented by a few displays of trauma from mothers who’ve lost their children and children who have lost their mothers. They’re opportunities to tug on the heartstrings of western audiences and emphasize the tragic cycle of war the region is stuck in. But these images don’t always feel organic. The scene with the children running through their memories feels more like the rehearsals for a local stage show that appear in the movie. Both are designed and practiced to illicit an emotional response.

That being said, the film does offer something western audiences might not expect to see: the empty silence of the borderlands. Instead of ISIS and armies, the majority of the shots feature vast open spaces explored by a few local hunters. Soldiers watch the landscape, but nothing happens. There are of course the signs of war, but no evidence of it existing in the present. As a result, it feels a bit like the photographer’s quest to shoot the Franco-Mexican War in Towards the Battle and Robert Fisk’s search for the Middle Eastern front lines in This is Not A Movie. Rosi has arrived in a war torn region to perhaps shoot the war, but the war has disappeared. Instead he finds an empty land waking up to be interpreted by his own gaze.

Head to our AFI Fest Hub for more reviews and short films from AFI Fest 2020.

Downstream to Kinshasa – AFI Fest 2020

The story of Downstream to Kinshasa starts with the Six Day War from 2000. Unlike the more famous 6 Day War fought between Israel and Egypt, this one was fought between Uganda and Rwanda in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Everything centered on the town of Kisangani where approximately 4,000 people were killed and 3,000 injured.

Among the survivors was director Dieudo Hamadi. In the Q&A for the film, he mentions that he was 15 or 16 during the conflict and doesn’t remember much about it. But on one return to his hometown his memories of the war were triggered from meeting a group of people (who become the focus of this documentary) that were disabled by it. He was privileged in being able to reconstruct a normal life and forget about the war, whilst others were permanently scared by it.

He was not the only one that forgot. And if one man who lived the war had lost his memories of it, it’s not too surprising that the rest of the town and country have forgotten the war too and the victims of it.

In Downstream to Kinshasa, we follow a group of people disabled by the war. They travel to the capital to make their story heard after it seems to have fallen on deaf ears at home. They want reparations from the country that refused to protect them.

Throughout their time in Kisangani and through their journey to Kinshasa, they’re shot going about their lives. One of the most incredible sections is their journey on a flat topped cargo boat down the Congo river. It’s transformed into a moving village with makeshift protection against the elements. It’s a multi-day journey that reminded me of the desert crossing migrants in Tenere.

Whilst they’re journeying, the director cuts between their present reality on their journey and shots of the group performing on the stage. The present documents their hope for change and their disabilities as we see it, whilst the shots of them performing on stage shows their story as they tell it. Their stage play appears self-deriding and built for a popular audience, but intertwining it in the documentary empowers their story. Simply including their experiences, as they tell it, validates them. They’re heard by more people thanks to this film. And in the context of their journey to the capital, including their story as they tell it emboldens their storytelling before they face their ultimate test – convincing the politicians and public in the capital.

Head to our AFI Fest Hub for more reviews and short films from AFI Fest 2020.

The Intruder – AFI Fest 2020

The Intruder does a lot in the opening 15 minutes. It develops the character of Ines rapidly to set the tone for the rest of the movie. We see that she works as a voice actor helping to dub foreign movies and is a part time chorister. We also find out that she has a lot of nightmares and is terrified of a lot of things such as planes and bats. There’s also her annoying boyfriend who helps to define her as the more grounded and normal of the two. All of this is crammed into the opening without feeling rushed, so when a catastrophe happens, we’re already familiar with Ines and her world.

This opening gives us a grasp of what’s normal for Ines. So, after her traumatic event, we can see that her life seemingly returns to normal. She’s back in the recording studio doing dub tracks and she’s back singing with her choir. The only things that change are her voice and a rise in the number of her dreams. But neither thing feels that alarming or unusual at first. Plus, it’s at this point that her mum shows up to help her recover from her trauma and a organist appears to rekindle her love life. They both help to enforce the normalcy of Ines’ life by appearing in the mundanity of it. But something just doesn’t feel quite right. Her life feels a bit like uncanny valley.

The director, Natalia Meta uses Ines’ dreams to establish the dream world as another place that exists beside Ines’ reality. It’s so close to her reality that we slip between the two with ease. The transition between the two worlds are aided by the darkness of Ines’ life. She moves from her dark apartment to the dark studio recording rooms and artificially lit choir hall and is never spotted in daylight. As she’s inside for most of the film, it’s hard to know what time of day it is at any point. As a result, we lose track of time, and with it our hold on reality. It’s hard to pinpoint when she’s dreaming or awake. The darkness facilitates the creation of Ines’ dream world and it’s merging with her everyday reality.

Head to our AFI Fest Hub for more reviews and short films from AFI Fest 2020.

Should the Wind Drop – AFI Fest 2020

Should the Wind Drop is a timely cinematic introduction to the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh. It’s a country that has suffered genocide and unending land disputes, which recently flared up with neighboring Azerbaijan (the country most of the international community places it within).

We enter the country with Alain, an airport inspector traveling from France. He, like most of us, arrives without much knowledge of the country’s history. He’s here to inspect the regional airport which has been shut down since the outbreak of war in the 1990’s. If it passes all his tests, it can be officially opened and both establish the country’s existence globally, and open it up for it’s residents.

We follow Alain’s transformation from an auditor “just doing his job” to a sympathizer of the independence cause. During his time there he meets a good portion of the population and slowly opens up to their way of life. He grows to sympathize with the optimistic airport operator, the TV host, and his taxi driver shown in his more open conversation with them. His connection to Nagorno-Karabakh peaks with a jovial drinking session with the local soldiers. It’s the one time he seems to stray from the commitment to his job and truly mix with the locals. His transformation serves us (the audience), as like him, we have probably come to this movie with little prior knowledge of the country and people. Whilst it seems foreign at first, we, like him, end the film with a connection to the place and it’s characters through his experiences.

As a result of it’s significance to the locals, the airport has become a symbol of pride and hope. It has the potential to free them from their landlocked prison and regional disputes and become recognized internationally. It also literally fuels the village as one little boy walks by the airport every day to fill up his water bottles to sell in the village. Everyone in the town is seen drinking his ‘magic water’. It symbolizes their faith in the airport and the modern world it will bring.

As a symbol of recognition, the movie itself is just like the airport. In being made and celebrated at international film festivals, it puts Nagorno-Karabakh on the map, finishing what the airport started.

Head to our AFI Fest Hub for more reviews and short films from AFI Fest 2020.