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Which are your favorite non-English movies, series etc?

If not favorite, ones that touched you in some way.

I'll start by mentioning some movies from my mother tongue(Malayalam of Kerala, India):

  • Mumbai Police
    A crime thriller (Came out almost 2 decades ago n was very striking for the time)
  • KammaraSambhavam
    Political/Historic satire/drama (The main actor has some cases on him, but the movie is quite good)
  • Kathavasheshan
  • Devasuram
    Conservative sigma male upper class Kerala dude getting character development. I really liked how the transformation happened in it
  • Maheshinte Parthikaaram (Mahesh's Revenge)
    Not an action movie.

From my country, but not in my mother tongue:

  • Super Deluxe - A Tamil movie that I recently watched, quite unique
  • Enthiran (Robot), a Tamil movie
    Has over the top stuff, but is fun to watch
  • Viduthalai(Liberation), another Tamil movie
  • Agent Vinod - A Hindi spy-comedy movie

The anime that I like are Hunter x Hunter, Parasyte, Samurai Flamenco, Gintama.

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  • The Handmaiden by Park Chan-wook is fantastic for movies.

    For books, Roadside Picnic by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky, and the movie adaptation Stalker by Tarkovsky, are sci-fi classics.

    Human Acts is another amazing book, this time from Han Kang.

  • I found these through now defunct/gone bad sites, but Fei Ren Zai (非人哉) and All Saints Street (万圣街). Both series are animated adaptations of webcomics from the same guy.

    Both have similar premises but are vastly different. Fei Ren Zai is a slice of life about mythological creatures, deities, and other such creatures from Chinese mythology living in modern day, done in short skits, pretty much being animated versions of the 4 panel comics the webcomic series is.

    All Saints Street follows something similar, except for the fact that it's western creatures (vampires, devils, angels, mummies, zombies, werewolves) living in modern times and doesn't really have that 4 panel comic style Fei Ren Zai has. It follows a demon named Neil Bowman who moves from Hell (Australia if I remember correctly) to live with a vampire friend of his and ends up in the first few episodes (maybe around 10 or less if I'm not wrong?) living with a vampire, mummy, werewolf, and his landlord, an angel and eventually his younger sister. All under a single roof. It's available on Crunchyroll with a Japanese dub, but I personally don't like it. Especially since I really love the use of vocaloid for the original Chinese dub theme song and love the Chinese voices (props to the voice actors).

    Also, France's Code Lyoko is an absolute favorite of mine because of how awesome I thought it was growing up and how I still think it's awesome. Mid-2000s cartoon where a group of 2D animated students at an academy must sneak off to go to a 3D CGI virtual world made possible by a radioactive material powered supercomputer that has a deadly computer virus like villainous thing housed inside the virtual world, trying to take out the kids so it can probably take over and get rid of all humans. If you don't wanna be confused on episode 1, as you're thrown in with no explanation, I recommend the episodes X.A.N.A. Awakens part 1 & 2.

  • One more mention for Dark, absolutely the best thing on Netflix IMO.

    Others:

    • Neuvas Rienas (9 queens) - an excellent Argentinian heist/scam film with quite a cool look. Like a mix of Ocean's Eleven (plotwise) and the Bourne films (visually).
    • Intacto - interesting Spanish movie about people who are able to steal others' luck. I could imagine Christopher Nolan doing an English language remake.
    • Le Havre - fun French film about an old man helping shelter a child who is in the country illegally. Very funny.
    • Akira - obviously
    • Ringu - original Japanese version. Terrifying.
    • Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon - quite an obvious choice, but it absolutely blew me away when it came out.
    • The Killing - Danish TV show. Not seen the American remake, but the original is amazing
    • Oldboy - Korean movie, as above, remade, but I've only seen this. I suspect this one is better!
    • Godzilla Minus One - monsters! And the suffering of post WW2 Japan! Odd mix, but it works!
    • 8 Femmes - very funny French murder mystery. Recently remade (pretty well) in Italian as 7 Women and a Murder.
    • Duet for Cannibals - very strange Swedish film I saw recently about two couples and some strange living/working arrangements.
    • Rashomon - classic Japanese movie, where we see the same event from 3 different perspectives
    • Taxi - brilliant French heist/crime/driving movie, with some superb car chases

    So many more, but this list is getting too long!

  • The Wave (about a landslide in a fjord) is one of my favorite disaster movies.

    The Quake (the sequel) is almost as good.

  • Cure (1997) is an absolutely mesmerizing film

  • When it comes to Christmas movies my most favorite ones are:

    • Joulutarina (Finnish)
    • Listy do M (Polish)
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