Critically Acclaimed Foreign Films

The first non-English film to win Best Picture at the Oscars, and it earned every bit of that history. Bong Joon-ho's class satire is flawless.

Jeunet's whimsical Parisian fantasy follows a shy waitress on a mission to bring happiness to others. It's impossible to watch without smiling.

Cuarón's deeply personal black-and-white masterpiece about a domestic worker in 1970s Mexico City. Every frame is a painting.

Miyazaki's animated masterpiece about a girl trapped in a spirit world is the most imaginative film ever made. Essential viewing at any age.

Del Toro weaves a dark fairy tale against the backdrop of post-Civil War Spain. The Pale Man sequence is among cinema's most terrifying creations.

A Stasi surveillance officer in East Berlin begins to question the system he serves. A masterful thriller about art, freedom, and the human conscience.

Tornatore's love letter to cinema follows a filmmaker looking back on his childhood in a Sicilian village. The ending montage is legendary.

Edward Yang's three-hour Taipei family epic is one of the greatest films about everyday life. Patient, profound, and deeply humane.

Wong Kar-wai's Hong Kong romance is cinema at its most ravishingly beautiful. Two neighbors discover their spouses are having an affair — what follows is pure poetry.

Meirelles' explosive chronicle of life in Rio's favelas is electric, kinetic, and unforgettable. One of the most viscerally powerful films ever made.

Farhadi's Iranian domestic drama turns a marital dispute into a riveting moral thriller. No heroes, no villains — just impossible human choices.

Sciamma's 18th-century romance between a painter and her subject smolders with restrained passion. The final shot is one of cinema's great emotional knockouts.