1 country, 1 movie
August 28, 2016 8:08 AM   Subscribe

From Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, the best of "worldly cinema" according to Reddit users. The individual country threads provide alternate suggestions. The list is as idiosyncratic as can be expected from a Reddit poll: entries on Niger, Nigeria and Palestine had to be deleted because the threads were downvoted to death, Vietnamese cinema does not exist at all and the Best Swedish Movie Ever is [spoiler]. It is, however, a powerful reminder that movies are made everywhere.

Belize - The Curse of the Xtabai (2012)
Dir. Matthiew Klinck
A sealed ancient Mayan cave would be blown open unleashing Xtabai to wreak havoc on the world and destroy civilization. She begins by infecting the inhabitants of a nearby village with a terrible and deadly fever. The government responds by placing the village under quarantine. A team of students along with their teacher escape into the jungle to find a cure, guided only by a dream. They go deep into the bowels of the Mayan underworld, hunted by Xtabai herself. Will they ultimately succeed in defeating the evil Xtabai and saving mankind from her curse? How many will live to tell the tale?
IMDB - YouTube
posted by elgilito (48 comments total) 26 users marked this as a favorite
 
The entry for Singapore is terrible. Homerun was a scene-by-scene lift from the Persian movie, Children of Heaven. Jack Neo is a hack who can't make films.

I'd suggest Ilo Ilo instead.
posted by the cydonian at 8:30 AM on August 28, 2016 [3 favorites]


Nice idea, and maybe a decent starting point for people to get better acquainted with the broader world of film, but the execution leaves something to be desired with a lot of, um, let's say questionable choices for movies to represent the countries. A few really good ones too though I should add.

Oh, and for Vietnam, try When the Tenth Month Comes.
posted by gusottertrout at 8:31 AM on August 28, 2016 [2 favorites]


I think the "according to Reddit users" explains a lot of the choices; very few of the films pre-date 2000, and they overlooked everything by Peter Weir for the Austrailian film and chose "Mad Max".
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:39 AM on August 28, 2016 [10 favorites]


I've glanced at some of the individual sub-reddits, and they are much better. So after looking at the final list for chuckles, look to the country specific posts for more, and often better, options. Not the easiest to parse though since they don't always give translated titles with their choices.

Generally, voted lists on popular sites aren't going to be great since they tend to go to the most widely known films, so it can be much more rewarding to look at lists from individuals or smaller group choices. I haven't had a lot of luck finding good film conversation on Reddit myself, but I tend to give up on all the surrounding noise rather quickly, so they may have more to offer than I'm aware of.
posted by gusottertrout at 8:46 AM on August 28, 2016 [2 favorites]


Thanks for reminding me about that Swedish film. I forgot all about it! Now I'm watching it again. It's sophomoric sheen is what it's all about.
posted by njohnson23 at 8:55 AM on August 28, 2016


Yeah, any process that has Kung Fury as the top film from Sweden is at least a little suspect
posted by Think_Long at 8:55 AM on August 28, 2016 [4 favorites]


Also, ignore the screenshots since at least one is wrong.
posted by I-baLL at 8:56 AM on August 28, 2016


I haven't had a lot of luck finding good film conversation on Reddit myself

/r/movies is actually really good by Reddit standards. But that still means you're mostly talking about irrelevant industry shit and stoner speculation most of the time.
posted by tobascodagama at 8:58 AM on August 28, 2016


I disliked the list a lot less when I started thinking of it as "Quick! Name a movie from [country]!"

Some of them look like they're just movies made about that country by foreign directors, and the selections from countries with well established, well known film industries are pretty much random.

But it's still a nice reminder if you ignore most of the actual suggestions. Just don't go out of your way to see that "The Star Tracks" movie or whatever it's called from the US. It's not very good.
posted by ernielundquist at 9:01 AM on August 28, 2016 [3 favorites]


Are there ever any reddit threads about what MetaFilter thinks about stuff? Because I know which website I trust and which one I don't.
posted by hippybear at 9:41 AM on August 28, 2016 [4 favorites]


The random, flaming baby carriage! Golden!
posted by Oyéah at 9:44 AM on August 28, 2016 [2 favorites]


I was trying not to do this, but I hereby fail.

Portugal is wrong as hell. Right now, today, there are two incredibly talented Portugese directors making excellent films, so the answer should probably be either Pedro Costa's Colossal Youth (my preference) or Miguel Gomes' Tabu, which is also amazing and probably has a bit wider appeal because it's not as slow paced and grim as Costa's movies.

Hungary is ridiculous as well, because Bela Tarr is Hungarian, and the answer needs to be either Satantango or Werckmeister Harmonies. Or The Turin Horse. How the hell do you pick one movie from Hungary and it's not Bela Tarr?

Also, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, possibly the greatest working director today, is Thai, and the answer should be Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, or literally any of his other movies.

There were a few other ones that bugged me, too, but those are the three that have been sticking in my craw.
posted by ernielundquist at 9:55 AM on August 28, 2016 [1 favorite]


Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives I want to see this.
posted by Oyéah at 9:56 AM on August 28, 2016


Yeah, any process that has Kung Fury as the top film from Sweden is at least a little suspect

Yeah, this choice is wrong on so many levels it makes my brain hurt.

On the other hand, scrolling down and suddenly encountering the familiar frame grabs for Solaris and Seven Samurai put a smile on my face.
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 9:57 AM on August 28, 2016


I will admit that I only skimmed through it rather than read every entry, but there sure seemed to be a lot of lazy choices in the ones I looked at. Crowdsourcing has its place, but I would not call this a victory.
posted by Dip Flash at 10:01 AM on August 28, 2016 [1 favorite]


The Russian movie company Mosfilm has a youtube channel with a lot of their movies:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEK3tT7DcfWGWJpNEDBdWog

Here's their playlist for movies with subtitles:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4dWJMOQ_a1TPLZbU-K3ic_HODgNTppT9

And, yes, Solaris and Stalker are both on there since they were both made by Mosfilm.

Now if you want to watch the Russian Sherlock Holmes films then you're outta luck with that channel since those were made by Lenfilm. Man, I wish they also had a youtube channel with a lot of their movies, also subtitled into English.


Oh, wait, what's this?

https://www.youtube.com/user/LenfilmVideo/playlists
posted by I-baLL at 10:07 AM on August 28, 2016 [7 favorites]


Oh, sure, Bela Tarr is all the hotness nowadays, no one cares about Miklós Jancsó anymore. The Red and the White already consigned to the dustbin. I see how it is.

I'm not even going to go into how neglected poor Márta Mészáros is, since so few women ever get their due as directors. Were I to go that route though, I certainly would put Dairy for My Children as the equal of anything else I've seen from Hungary.

And although I guess it's all ancient history now, Zoltán Fábri's Merry-Go-Round, or Károly Makk's Love could be at least noted in an archaeological sense for being top notch.

(Actually, kidding aside, I'd have a hard time deciding between Werckmeister Harmonies and those others myself, but I ain't willing to concede any of them easily either, well, maybe Love.)

João César Monteiro is an amazing director. I don't know the specific film they choose for the poll, but I'd have Veredas as at least the equal of the Costa films I've seen, and it may be even a little more singular an outing.

Can't disagree on Apichatpong Weerasethakul though, probably my favorite working director, but for me it's Syndromes and a Century at the top of the list, I mean aside from The Adventures of Iron Pussy of course.
posted by gusottertrout at 10:35 AM on August 28, 2016 [4 favorites]


Oh, and I'd hate to forget Manoel de Oliveira when talking about Portugal. I don't know if he has a single film I'd list with Costa or Monteiro's best, but a director who shot his first film in 1942 and his last in 2012 at age 103! deserves some mention especially since he was plenty talented too.
posted by gusottertrout at 10:44 AM on August 28, 2016


One of my favorites: The White Balloon is a 1995 Iranian film directed by Jafar Panahi, with a screenplay by Abbas Kiarostami. It was Panahi's feature-film debut as director.
Here is a very good overview of the movie
posted by robbyrobs at 10:50 AM on August 28, 2016 [1 favorite]


Another Vietnamese movie I always recommend is Three Seasons.
posted by numaner at 10:57 AM on August 28, 2016


One of the selections that pains me most is the choice for Czechia. I don't know if they purposefully decided to only choose movies made after Czechoslovakia dissolved, but the Czechs have one of the richest film histories in Europe, so if so it's a unfortunate setting aside of a tremendous body of work if that's the case.

Iran does have an excellent set of options to choose from. Slightly outside the better known names, I'd offer The Apple as a possibility as well. It was directed by Samira Makhmalbaf when she was just 17 years old and it's a wonder.

Samira is the daughter of Mohsen Makhmalbaf, a wonderful writer director whose film The Cyclist is another favorite of mine, so she obviously had some advantages in her initial effort. The film has the flavor of youth to it in its narrow focus that provides a strangely heightened sense of the fantastic to a all too constrained reality which makes it seem very much the product of youth, even with her father serving as writer, and no doubt supervisor on the film.
posted by gusottertrout at 11:25 AM on August 28, 2016 [2 favorites]


OK, gusottertrout, I am having a very hard time imagining anything bumping Tarr or Costa down on my list, but I am tracking those recommendations down right now, because I am all the way down for anything in the same ballpark.

BTW, you are my movie buddy, like it or not.
posted by ernielundquist at 11:25 AM on August 28, 2016


How in the world could I not like it? Not many places around to talk about the greatness that is Apichatpong Weerasethakul without people giving you the side eye something fierce.

Oh, and if you do track those down, on reflection, I might prefer Mészáros' Adoption over Diary, by a slight bit, but either is worth seeing.
posted by gusottertrout at 11:37 AM on August 28, 2016 [1 favorite]


They pick correctly for a couple of countries (Poland, Italy, Mexico, Iran, you can even make an argument about Wong Kar Wai versus any kung fu or gunplay films) but Kung Fury is just trolling people when Bergman made several films that were perfect, and Lukas Moodysson also made one (Fucking Åmål). Not having either Renoir or Godard in France is wrong, even if they listed Truffaut. Not finding a spot for Milos Forman's 60s work in the Czech Republic is a tragedy.

There is a great world cinema out there but I don't think this is a way to access much of it. Reducing rich film histories to one film per country loses a great deal of context.
posted by graymouser at 11:44 AM on August 28, 2016 [2 favorites]


Picking one film per country guarantees that people will follow up with their own passionate recommendations. I'm cool with it. Letting stuff like Kung Fury stand underlines the fact that the results are only ever going to be so authoritative. Nobody on the planet is going to seriously believe that each country of the world only has one great movie. Instead, the point is to cast a wide net around the entire globe.

OTOH, it would have been good to let each country have a top five list.
posted by Sticherbeast at 12:27 PM on August 28, 2016 [5 favorites]


Maybe we need a good MF post about international cinema with a top five list per country rather than relying on reddit?
posted by hippybear at 12:41 PM on August 28, 2016 [2 favorites]


I love Bon Cop Bad Cop but it's not the best choice for Canada. It's fun and well acted and the switching between English and French is delightful but Canada has so much more to offer. Like, we gave the world David Cronenberg. Videodrome and Dead Ringers are both Canadian. There's Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner, War Witch, and Incendies. But considering it was reddit I figured it was between Bon Cop Bad Cop and Goon.

Also not at all surprised to see Oldboy though I think that Thirst is by far the best Chan-Wook film. Plus there are so many great Korean films out there but then....reddit. So, yeah. I'll have to give the individual country threads a read, get at least a few new recommendations.
posted by Neronomius at 1:03 PM on August 28, 2016 [2 favorites]


The entry which has the least number of actual viewers in the corresponding country (relative to adult population) should win a Prix de Mefi.

(Santango, if chosen, would have won the grand prix and been retired from competition.)
posted by tirutiru at 1:05 PM on August 28, 2016


There is a great world cinema out there but I don't think this is a way to access much of it. Reducing rich film histories to one film per country loses a great deal of context.

The usual recipe for a "best movies" list on the English-language internet goes like this: 80% US movies + 19% English-language non-US movies + The Seven Samurai (the recent BBC list was an exception). So, most "rich movie histories" are not just reduced, but erased, which is truly frustrating, particularly for those of us who hail from non-anglophone countries. Frankly, even just knowing that some of the movies in the Worldly list exist - and that they have trailers on YouTube, just like Batman v Squirrel Girl! - is great. Is having Kung Fury instead of Det sjunde inseglet as the top Swedish movie of all time silly? Yes, but it also means that Swedish cinema, after all, is not just 100% Bergman. And that list resulted in more discussion on the respective merits of Portuguese filmmakers in this thread than in the entire run of Metafilter (Manoel de Oliveira got 2 FPPs, one when he turned 100 and one when he died).
posted by elgilito at 1:31 PM on August 28, 2016 [5 favorites]


The Icelandic entry is a fucking Sigur Rós tour video‽ Surely they could have at least made it 101 Reykjavík or something.

I'd have chosen Angels Of The Universe , but that's just my view
posted by acb at 1:44 PM on August 28, 2016


Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives I want to see this.

It's one of the best movies I've ever seen. Fanfare thread
posted by naju at 2:35 PM on August 28, 2016


Guy Maddin is Canadian. I haven't seen the Canadian selection, but could it possibly be better than My Winnipeg or even The Saddest Music in the World for representing Canada?

Even maybe Xavier Dolan. I don't think he's finished maturing as a filmmaker, but he's a wunderkind, and his movies tend to appeal to young men, from what I've seen, so I would have expected Reddit to be all over him.

However, I do support the Editor's prerogative in selecting Kung Fury to represent Sweden because Bergman and Andersson and all those other guys are hacks, and I also applaud Neil Degrasse Tyson's decision to declare Sweden is no longer a planet, and the UN's recent decision to change Sweden's name to Clowntown. If I type Sweden Sweden Sweden enough times, you will eventually start to see it for the absurdity that it is. That's not semantic satiation. It's the scales dropping from your eyes. Take that, Sweden!
posted by ernielundquist at 2:43 PM on August 28, 2016


I've always found that these sorts of endeavors tend to produce a list that suffers from a vague overall blandness. It's much more enriching, in my opinion, to discover a few critics whose style / taste is in the ballpark of your own and follow them closely for recommendations.

Case in point a lot of the time I notice that the movies I tend to enjoy most are less popular on aggregate scales (say 60-80% on Rotten Tomatoes) but have a few critics I like arguing passionately in their favor. As opposed to some of the 90%+ universally praised films.
posted by dreamlanding at 2:44 PM on August 28, 2016


Swedish cinema may not be just Bergman, but Winter Light remains the best film I've ever seen in terms of storytelling, acting and cinematography. (Det sjunde inseglet and Smultronstället were excellent but Bergman's work needed Sven Nykvist's ability to frame a shot.) And again, if you want slightly more recent cinema, the LGBT-focused Fucking Åmål is very nearly perfect. It's insulting to the idea of cinema to say that a recent internet favorite is better than either of those.

But I mean, just because Seven Samurai is perfect doesn't mean that a viewer wouldn't gain anything from the reams of non-Kurosawa Japanese film; being a fan of New Waves in general, I think the Japanese New Wave was something certainly more daring than the conventionally ideal Kurosawa movies, and got as much out of going on a limb with Seijun Suzuki's Tokyo Drifter or Branded to Kill.

What I'm getting at is that depth is more important than breadth. The idea that you can watch one movie or one director and really understand the cinematic output of a whole country is wrong, because those movies respond and react both within a cinematic culture and internationally. I mean, the Nouvelle Vague was a response to American crime films, and in turn drove a whole series of cinematic movements around the world. You get more out of In the Mood for Love when you've seen both a lot of Hong Kong action films and a lot of New Wave films.

It's also frustrating when it comes to trying to peg every movie to a country. I mean, is Buñuel's output all counted under "Spain" because he was Spanish, or are L'Age d'Or and Le Charme discret de la bourgeoisie "French" because they are in French and were released in France? And with either answer, where would Cet obscur objet du désir/Ese oscuro objeto del deseo (produced in both France and Spain, with dialogue in both languages) fit? Where the hell do you stick Jodorowsky, a Chilean filmmaker who lives in France and whose most famous films were made in Mexico but couldn't be released there?

The point being, shallow engagement with a lot of different countries' cinema doesn't give you the depth you really need for judgment, which comes from deeper dives. Case in point: since Hong Kong is relatively well known we see In the Mood for Love and not The Killer. But this list leaves the viewer in the shallows.
posted by graymouser at 2:47 PM on August 28, 2016 [1 favorite]


I personally might have picked Sallah or Someone To Run With (or maybe The Troupe if you want some hardcore cheese) for Israeli cinema, but Waltz Im Bashir is a hard choice to argue against.
posted by Itaxpica at 4:01 PM on August 28, 2016


I only watched a few minutes of Kung Fury, but I found the mash up of cop/buddy, superhero, kung fu movie, transformers movie, with dank Blade Runner dystopia, funny. And the secret sauce coming out of the exploding heads, and the tongue sticking out of one half of his first cop buddy, screeching overkill of the hyper realistic blood sport, great satire, with a taste of comedic overkill, flaming baby carriage and all. Those Swedish films, I saw when I was too young. Cries and Whispers, I don't want to see it again.
posted by Oyéah at 4:53 PM on August 28, 2016


The choice for Morocco, Ali Zaoua, is tremendous, haunting. The Denmark choice is frustrating because damn, there are so many other great Danish films to choose from, but Jagten is really, really good, deserving of high regard.

My tastes are suspect, though. My favorite Italian film is Pranzo do Ferragosto. I just love it.
posted by Ice Cream Socialist at 5:02 PM on August 28, 2016


I've always found that these sorts of endeavors tend to produce a list that suffers from a vague overall blandness.

So true. It's similar to the reels that play during the Oscars for "best foreign feature" that seem to blur all international film into one general story of "x poor person struggles for y goal against a backdrop of z (ongoing civil war, drug violence, child trafficking, etc.)". Not to say that these topics aren't important or that art should not be addressing them, but from my extremely limited experience, international film can be so much more playful and differently oriented than the tragic melodramas the academy and western critics tend to recognize.
posted by Think_Long at 5:03 PM on August 28, 2016 [2 favorites]


Though Solaris is an obvious choice, I just want to mention Andrei Rublev, because it's great.

With no room for international co-productions, there's no room for Dreyer's La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc, but what can you do?
posted by Ice Cream Socialist at 5:15 PM on August 28, 2016 [1 favorite]


One of the difficult things in talking about "best" film lists is all the associated hurdles in knowing what one is even getting at in making a list. Cinema has such a burden of gatekeeping in how we view its history that we inevitably are only able to speak of small subsets of movies in any wide terms of appreciation.

Partly this is due to vagaries of how films are produced and released, with each market seeing only one small selection of films from any given year, or for those interested, from its history. The movies that get released at theaters or on dvd for distribution are selected for having some sense of cross cultural impact. Films that are talked about are films which have been seen, so some small group of people are in a general sense setting the tastes of the audience by saying these films are what people will respond to. Critics have some influence, but they too aren't or haven't seen all that much in many instances and are tied to the tastes of their predecessors in talking about films of "influence" which often means films that older generations had access to.

For example, Seven Samurai is undoubtedly one of the most influential films from Japan, it's spawned numerous direct imitations and shaped countless more films through its style. So it's undeniably important and many will say great, however that would be defined. Yet if you ask me, it isn't even Kurosawa's best film, that would be No Regrets for Our Youth, which is, in my mind, one of the great examples of a kind of feminist jouissance in film. (an unexpected one too coming from Kurosawa who rarely had women as central protagonists). Now No Regrets fits better with my history and interests than Seven Samurai does, so I may be far more prone to liking it than others with different interests might be. I could argue for it and/or argue against Seven Samurai but it won't matter if there is little common ground of roots in past experience.

That Seven Samurai is deemed so significant comes in part from its history of being one of the earliest major films to come from Japan to be seen around the world. It also comes from fitting a model of masculinity that is appealing to filmmakers and audiences where action and visceral pleasure tends to come with certain expectations that Seven Samurai fulfills admirably. Yet in the decades after it first drew acclaim, many more films have come from Japan that are now seen as even greater by critics, Ozu, for example is held by many critics as the greatest director period. Yet Ozu is not so easily duplicated, though some directors do make homages, so his influence is of a different sort and his films won't capture public imagination in an era of action driven dynamic filmmaking, so his appeal is limited to those who are more invested in a different notion of what great cinema means.

It that better or worse? Hard to say exactly, I believe its better but I've invested enormous amounts of time to film study, so my perspective, like that of some critics, is almost certainly at odds with the experience of people who haven't the same type of interest in the subject. It becomes then a question of authority in a sense. If you believe that film or art generally has a learning process that can lead to greater appreciation then you might be more likely to accept there are movies one might not like oneself that are better than what one does like. Most of us balk at this though, art in this view, particularly popular art, is something we are all expert in just by viewing it, so anything that we don't like by definition can't be good since we get nothing or little out of it. Art is only meaningful in our experience of it in this view.

Without going into even further derail on that, let me just say these types of lists are incoherent because of that divide between different types of experience or understanding of the subject. It's something that always haunts discussion of art, but list making, be virtue of being an amalgamation of viewpoints is particularly bad at this. That in part, I suppose, is why they're enjoyable to read, so we can argue with the incoherency, but it keeps the lists from creating any greater potential shared understanding of the subject since the entries on the lists are not communicating with each other to provide discussion. They are talking over each other where the known and popular entries get most of the attention, as usual, thus leading back to the circle of reinforcement that is so hard to break.

Sorry, that went on a bit, well, quite a bit. Art appreciation, particularly cinema, is a subject of special interest to me so I tend to overdo things sometimes.
posted by gusottertrout at 5:19 PM on August 28, 2016 [4 favorites]


Man, all of y'all should be posting some of your favorite movies to Fanfare. Make a club or something where you guys can post the movies you'd recommend so people can subscribe and see everyone's posts.

I really like seeing people write about the movies they love, at length, and I don't think you can really overdo it. Film is probably the closest thing we'll have to experiencing the world from another person's perspective. That's pretty overwhelming sometimes. There's a lot to say about it, and there's always something new to notice about it.
posted by ernielundquist at 5:53 PM on August 28, 2016 [2 favorites]


For Canada it should have been Le Déclin de l'empire américain, Les Invasions barbares, or Elvis Gratton. Relax English Canadian Cinema, Québec has got this.
posted by furtive at 5:56 PM on August 28, 2016 [2 favorites]


MetaFilter: a subject of special interest to me so I tend to overdo things sometimes.
posted by hippybear at 6:05 PM on August 28, 2016 [1 favorite]


This thread am good
posted by Potomac Avenue at 11:10 PM on August 28, 2016


I came for New Zealand and I was not disappointed.

Interesting that countries experiencing war produce movies about war.
posted by arzakh at 5:45 AM on August 29, 2016


Everybody knows and agrees that the best Russian, Swedish, and Norwegian movie is Mio in the Land of Faraway. There is no dispute. Though, come to think of it, there is Batman.
posted by I-baLL at 10:49 AM on August 29, 2016


hmm, Winter Sleep (the Turkish offering) is not what I'd have chosen, although another one of Nuri Bilge Ceylan's films--Once Upon a Time in Anatolia--would be a serious contender, probably my top choice. Maybe vying with Fatih Akın's The Edge of Heaven or Head-On (but those are Turkish-German, really--diasporic cinema par excellence) or Yılmaz Güney's Yol.
posted by karayel at 8:12 PM on August 29, 2016 [1 favorite]


also Five Broken Cameras is a good documentary, but I'm not really sure why it's on here instead of something by Elia Suleiman (Divine Intervention would be my nomination for Palestine) or Hany Abu-Assad.
posted by karayel at 8:16 PM on August 29, 2016


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