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

Tune Into The Future – Luxembourg City Film Festival 2020

Many decades before the internet gave us nerd culture, there was Hugo Gernsback, an eccentric Luxembourgish writer and inventory who went on to become the father of modern science fiction.
Festival Scope

Tune into the Future tracks Hugo Gernsback’s life and inventions from his roots in Luxembourg and Europe, to finding his path and career in New York. It’s a story told with plenty of animations, interviews, personal anecdotes from his grandson, with references stretching from Tesla and Superman (Superman’s creator was inspired by Hugo’s publications).

Tune into the Future starts with some small square black and white footage of Hugo back in the day before the narrator interrupts the footage to tell us we’re missing the true (colorful) story. At this point the small black and white square footage expands to take up the entire screen and starts parading through images of Hugo’s fantastic speculative inventions from the future. The director, Eric Schockmel knows the inventions are the most eye catching part of Hugo’s work so he uses them to get us hooked in order to tell Hugo’s life story.

The director’s experience working with Museum Exhibits definitely shines through this documentary. He successfully manages to keep the audience engaged and interested throughout by mixing dry one on one interviews and personal anecdotes with animations that bring the anecdotes and Hugo’s ideas to life. It reminded me a bit of the educational YouTube videos made by Kurzgesagt – informative, but always engaging.

The way the documentary is presented matches Hugo’s own attempts to popularize science. He, like the director, used a mix of media to promote visions of utopia and drive interest in science across the world. In Schockmel’s case, he makes the film to rejuvenate Hugo’s efforts to popularize science in a time when experts and utopian ideas are being forgotten around the world. It’s time for the world to start dreaming again.

Gibrey Allen on Becoming a Filmmaker and Directing Right Near the Beach

The debut feature from Gibrey Allen, Right Near the Beach, was one of our favorite films at the Pan African Film Festival 2020 in Los Angeles. It builds on the themes of grief and homophobia in Allen’s 2011 short film Excuses for Jeff with a unique visual style and soundscape which makes you feel like you’re in the film, right next to the characters.

So we’re excited to present a brief interview with Gibrey Allen himself. Scroll down for the interview, and be sure to follow Gibrey Allen on Instagram (@DearMayFilms) for updates on Right Near the Beach‘s release. You can read our review of Gibrey’s debut feature here.

First of all, what inspired you to become a filmmaker?

Before I started making films I was acting. I was always interested in film-making but the drive to create better roles than what I was been offered was the impetus.

I found that in my first project Excuses for Jeff. The end to end creative process was a both a great challenge and joy. Living every aspect of the film-making process gave me a greater purpose than playing a character. Creating and having control of how story is told, particularly stories about the black experience, is important. Stories that celebrate or show true conflict, or stories that aren’t trivial, are important to me. That is my film-making mission.

What drew you to the story of Jeff and homophobia in Jamaica?

Homophobia in Jamaica unfortunately is a very real and prominent thing. The music can sometimes inform this, as well as religion, laws and politics which in turn normalizes homophobic thinking. It makes you forget what every human being wants; love and acceptance. Migrating from Jamaica to New York, where sexuality is varied and open, made me see the LGBTQ community not for their sexual interactions but for the people they are. With the story of Jeff I wanted to tell a very human story, not the usual approach I have seen in films and documentaries. To tell and move a story with cinema; the music, the sound, and visuals is what I love about film-making. I didn’t want to lecture with this film, I wanted to appeal to the heart.

How was filming in Jamaica?

Filming overall was a good experience. Most of the issues stemmed from a budgetary stand point; a smaller crew and not being able to get all the locations we’d hope for. Early on we figured we’d embrace these things, looking at what we did have and use that to make an even more intimate story.

Did having Excuses for Jeff help in the production of Right Near the Beach?

Yes. Knowing the area and landscape helped. Forehand knowledge of some of the challenges and logistics, such transportation and accommodations. It also helped with the writing process because I knew which characters to tell the story best through.

How did you develop your process for your first feature film versus making you short films?

The feature was the same approach as the shorts. Not necessarily by design but because the feature was shot in three different trips over a year and a half. The scope of things didn’t become so grandiose and production didn’t become a huge moving thing.

What informed your visual style and soundscape for Right Near the Beach?

I want a voyeuristic view into the life of Mr. Jacob, the father. Almost like you’re eavesdropping on something you’re not supposed to see, someone in deep pain and mourning. The movement of the camera to react violently when he’s angry, the movement slowing down in the quiet and pensive moments. Terrence Malick’s visual language was a great reference and also Lance Hammer’s Ballast.

We embraced the nature sounds; the flora and fauna that are natural to the farm and rural setting. Quiet moments were also very important so you had time to feel and get pulled into the journey. For the Mike character we used more post-production sounds, sounds that call back to his past and childhood. More mechanical sounds which underscore the demons he’s living with.

What challenges did you face in building the style into the film?

The main challenge that we found was that we didn’t have lots of coverage on shots. With the one-take approach that we primarily used we had to shoot until we got the take that worked. This was also magnified because the cast were all local players. There’s a bit of safety in having full coverage, you can cut away to another angle or to other subjects if something doesn’t work with a particular take.

Do you feel like you made the film you set out to make, or did your vision for the film change in the film-making process?

Yes, the overall idea and feel of the story came through. However, the film process was very fluid and organic. We had to embrace everything that came along. Weather for example was a big one. It’s a tropical climate so it would rain or get overcast. Rather than waiting for these things to pass we used them to heighten moments in the film.

How is your release going so far?

No release yet as the hope is to build an audience and buzz through festivals before we take that step.

Where can readers catch the film next?

Not sure yet as COVID-19 has affected the festival run. Follow @DearMayFilms on Instagram for updates.

Do you have any projects in the works?

Yes, currently in pre-production on the next feature, also set in Jamaica. Can’t give much details yet but I can say it’s going be in the western style.

What films, books, music, art can we look up to get to know you better?

Films: The cinematic language I like are that of Terence Malick, Lars Von Trier, Steven McQueen (Please watch Hunger), Thomas Vinterberg. Pretty much anything that Roger Deakins and Emmanuel Lubezki photographs.

Music: Tons of Reggae; Beres Hammond, Peter Tosh, Bob Marley, Ken Booth, Toots and the Maytals. Blues, Folk music and anything that promotes me keeping my beard.

Follow Gibrey Allen @DearMayFilms on Instagram for updates on where to watch Right Near the Beach. You can read our full review of Right Near the Beach here.

Witnesses – A Bleak Croatian Portrayal of the Futility of War

Witnesses Film Difficulty Ranking: 3

Witnesses follows a group of brothers who have returned from the front lines of the Croatian-Serbian War as broken men. Their thirst for revenge fuels a late night attack on a Serbian neighbor. Rumors of witnesses pushes them to solemnly work to eliminate all of them. However, stuck in a bleak city on lockdown in a narrative that keeps replaying the past indicates that their fate is unavoidable.

From: Croatia, Europe
Watch: Tubi, Kanopy
Next: The Load, Sleepwalking Land, Shok

The Breakdown

It feels like the three brothers are doomed right from the start when they murder their Serbian neighbor. As they drive towards his house crammed into a small car, they’re completely silent and lifeless. Their lack of emotion makes it feel like their condemned to act instead of acting willingly. After the murder, they appear solemnly sat around the table in their mother’s house in silence. Their mother is dressed black in mourning, and their father is lying next door in an open coffin. An empty bar is the only other place the brothers are pictured, sipping on pints of beer in silence. It feels like they’ve already resigned themselves to their fate and are simply waiting for it to catch up with them.

Their hopelessness is also imbued into the setting. The skies are constantly overcast which shrouds everything underneath them in a bleak palette of greys. The lack of light makes the brothers faces appear more ghostly and pale, in contrast to the more vibrant colors of their flashbacks on the front lines of the war in a time before they’d lost hope. Now, with trauma from the war and having murdered a neighbor, their pale faces are a mark of the life that has left them. They’re sleepwalking like zombies towards their fate.

The narrative structure also serves to construct the prison of trauma they’re stuck in. Following the murder, they’re never given the same freedom as in the opening scene where the camera follows them around the town in their car in one shot. As the film moves on, the same scenes start replaying: scenes of the three brothers in the bar, scenes of the three brothers around the table by their dead dad, and scenes of the three brothers at funerals. Repeatedly showing the brothers in the same places traps them within a limited area. Furthermore, the scenes are all shot with still cameras that don’t move, mimicking their guilt by trapping them within the frame. Even though they haven’t been found guilty, the way the cyclical narrative and fixed cameras become their prison. They’re stuck within the deserted town to be consumed by their guilt and trauma from the war.

The bleak setting, emotionless characters, and cyclical narrative imbues hopelessness into the look and tone of Witnesses, turning it into a gloomy but effective film about the futility of war and hate, and the grief and trauma it causes.

What to Watch Next

If you’re looking for more bleak portrayals of the Balkan Wars, I strongly recommend watching:

The Load: A road trip movie following one Serbian man’s truck journey from Kosovo to Belgrade. It’s also his journey to becoming aware of the grim reality of the war.
Shok: A short film that depicts the brutal occupation of Kosovo.

Or if you’d rather watch more bleak films featuring characters blindly moving forward in divided countries check out Mozambique’s Sleepwalking Land or Rwanda’s The Mercy of the Jungle.

39 Great Movies on Netflix UK You Can Stream Right Now

As a good percentage of our readers are based in the UK here’s a list of great movies streaming on Netflix UK to help keep our UK readers busy during the pandemic. I’ve paired up most of the recommendations so if you like one, you might like the other. So, in no particular order here’s 39 great movies to watch on Netflix UK:

First Reformed: a powerful drama about a priest doubting his faith amidst Climate Change
Uncut Gems: a sport infused thriller with gambling, loan sharks, and NBA stars that never slows down. Also see Good Time.
Pom Poko: a Studio Ghibli animated story of magical raccoons fighting human expansion. For more Studio Ghibli animation, see Howl’s Moving Castle.
Contagion: probably the most relevant film on this list. Focuses on world stalling pandemic that started in China. A lot of similarities with COVID19, but more deadly.
The Death of Mr. Lazarescu: for a horrifying and depressing look at the overcrowded Romanian health system, this is your film.
High Flying Bird: a sports drama focusing on all aspects of the NBA lockout for anyone interested in the side of sport you don’t see. Also watch Soderbergh’s unique The Laundromat, which looks at offshore accounts in Panama. Both films are more interesting and fun than they sound.
The Grandmaster and Ip Man: both great films for your marital arts fix.
Lord of the Rings trilogy: if you want to disappear into another world for 9 hours.
Ex Machina: simple but tense film featuring two men debating and fighting over the responsibility of creating A.I. If you’ve already seen it, watch Annihilation.
Dolemite is My Name: a wholesome dramedy about the life of Black comedian Rudy Ray Moore.
Miles Ahead: a brilliantly innovative ‘biographical’ film about Miles Davis.
The Social Network: brilliantly charts the rise of Facebook – could do with a sequel now. If you’ve already seen it and you like sport check out Moneyball (brilliantly written by the same screenwriter, Aaron Sorkin).
The Irishman: Martin Scorcese’s epic, nostalgic gangster film. Goodfellas is also available on Netflix.
Erin Brokovich: one woman fighting the water companies for providing contaminated tap water. For more films about people fighting the system, check out Kill the Messenger (Iran-Contra crisis) and Spotlight (pedophilia in Catholic Church).
Under the Shadow: a must watch horror film based in Iran that uses the Iran-Iraq War and patriarchal society to provide its punch. For more horror, watch A Quiet Place.
Fruitvale Station: the last day in Oscar Grant’s life. For more films focusing on black characters in the Bay Area, California, check out Blindspotting.
Beasts of No Nation: child soldiers in Africa featuring Idris Elba. For more child soldiers and oppressive regimes, check out First They Killed My Father.
Boyz in the Hood: the original Los Angeles hood film featuring Ice Cube. Or to watch a biographical film featuring Ice Cube, check out Straight Outta Compton which charts the rise of N.W.A.
Lady Bird: a fun dramedy of one girl’s high school life in small town California. If you want another great good-humored film featuring small town American life, check out Boyhood.
Death of Stalin: for more comedy. This time a political satire as all of Stalin’s cronies plot to win power following his death.
The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open: an immersive day in the life of two indigenous domestic abuse survivors meeting out of chance. Could also watch Sandstorm for another international film featuring women shaped in patriarchal societies.
Roma: follow the life of Cleo, a domestic worker to a wealthy family in Mexico City. One of the best art films on Netflix. For more great Latin American films, check out Birds of Passage (perfect for fans of Narcos).
Phantom Thread: watch if quirky upper class British families are your thing.

If you’re outside of the UK you can look up all of these films on JustWatch to find out where they’re streaming. Or check out the Best Movies of the 2010s That You Can Stream Right Now or scroll through the Netflix films.

Dark Skull – A Dark Journey into Subterranean Bolivia

Dark Skull Film Difficulty Ranking: 4

Dark Skull isn’t your typical character driven drama. The dark environment of the Huanuni mines and Bolivian city streets are a long way away from familiar landscapes. Pretty much the entire film is set in darkness, either during the nighttime above ground, or underground during the daytime. Day starts to blend into night, and scenes above ground start to dissolve into the scenes below ground as both are shrouded in darkness. We journey into the subterranean with Elder as his mind is consumed by the abyss. Is he in control, or is the environment driving him mad?

From: Bolivia, South America
Watch: Trailer, Vimeo
Next: A Touch of Sin, Tony Manero, El Dorado XXI

The Breakdown

We’re introduced to Elder in a vice filled opening. We see him chase after a woman and rob her, before retreating down a dark alley to drink and smoke. He looks like Gollum from Lord of the Rings, lurking in the shadows whilst he fondles a crack pipe in his hands. Next he’s in a hectic night club, before he’s being chased along the street by a group of men. The opening establishes Elder’s depraved existence in the shadows of an anonymous Bolivian city.

From there, Dark Skull cuts to a nighttime search party of men and women lighting up the hills and canyons of rural Bolivia with flashlights. The juxtaposition between the noisy built up urban environment in which Elder resides, and the silent, empty rural environment is noticeable. Perhaps Dark Skull isn’t following a linear narrative.

The search party finds what they’re looking for in the dead body of Elder’s dad, slumped on the ground behind a shrub. The group starts preparing his burial as Elder is recalled from the city. He’s been ordered home to live with his lone grandmother and assume his dead father’s job in the mines.

No one asks him whether he wants to work in the mines. Down inside the earth, he tells his new colleagues that the job is only temporary and he will be moving on. However, after seeing him struggling to get by in the opening, it doesn’t look like he has anything to escape to. For the foreseeable future, it looks like he’ll be spending his days under the same ground his father is buried in. It’s not an environment he’s accustomed to.

In the first day or two underground, director Kiro Russo immerses us in the harsh, claustrophobic underground tunnels of the mining complex. Firstly, the noise of the machines is so overbearing that the director dissolves a shot of Elder’s face into a montage of close ups of machinery. It’s as if Elder’s becoming part of the machine. With it, he’s losing his personality to the collective workforce, much like the machinery montages you might have seen in early Soviet film. Secondly, it’s dark. The only light comes from the head torches and flash lights the miners carry. Everywhere else is a dark indistinguishable abyss.

Overwhelmed by the machinery, Elder ventures out into the abyss on his own to take a break. As he wanders, Russo starts rotating the camera vertically as well as horizontally to further disorientate us as Elder gets lost. Alone in the darkness, the scenes reminded me of the Nietzsche quote: “when you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you”. Elder has ventured into the abyss, and the abyss has consumed him. His life and freedom has been vanquished, and he’s now stuck toiling in his father’s life until he joins him permanently underground. With nothing to strive for and his own ego being dissolved, he drinks and smokes to escape thinking about his fate. He makes petty acts of resistance, like pissing on his colleagues bags and feigning injury, to throw up a middle finger to his fate.

But you could also view Dark Skull as a story of one man’s degeneration from working in the mines. Later in the film, Elder is pictured in the same nightclub as in the opening. It’s not clear if he’s revisiting the club, is imagining it, or he’s stuck in a cycle. Perhaps the opening scenes are a flash forward to an Elder already messed up from working in the mines. Seen this way, Dark Skull becomes film about the degradation of one man forced to work in an oppressive mine instead of the story of a drunkard without ambition.

What to Watch Next

Kiro Russo draws on a wide range of influences to make Dark Skull. Most noticeably, Dark Skull feels and looks like Chinese Noir, such as the dark underworld of The Wild Goose Lake and the depraved characters and hopelessness in A Touch of Sin. (Speaking of depraved characters and hopelessness, you could also watch Pablo Larrain’s Tony Manero and/or Post Mortem).

Dark Skull also references early Soviet film techniques that you see in its montages and disorientating dissolve cuts of Man With A Movie Camera. Albeit in this case, the techniques are used to create hopeless confusion, instead of excitement for modernity.

Or, for more mining in darkness in rural South America, check out Peru’s slow film El Dorado XXI, featuring another mine isolated in an incredibly harsh environment.