The Best Foreign Language Films On Netflix Will Broaden Your Mind

This Brazilian–French drama written and directed by Kleber Mendonça Filho is a tale of resistance which feels like a rallying cry. The story focuses on Clara, a 65-year-old widow and retired music critic who vows to live in her apartment until she dies after a developer buys all of the units around her. Sônia Braga is captivating as the free-spirited and tenacious Clara in this film which serves as a timely reminder about the connections we make to a place, and the emotional importance of home.

First They Killed My Father

Angelina Jolie directs this striking Khmer language Netflix Original based on the biography of Cambodian human-rights activist Loung Ung. The film, which was nominated for a BAFTA and Golden Globe, finds 5-year-old Ung as the Khmer Rouge assumes power over Cambodia in 1975. The Communist group's reign of terror causes the death of nearly 2 million Cambodians, and results in Ung's six siblings being sent to labor camps while she is trained as a child soldier. A harrowing yet important reminder of the individual stories which are often lost against the backdrop of genocide.

An Easy Girl

Naïma, a teenager living in Cannes and working as a chambermaid in a hotel has her life shaken up when her beautiful older cousin Sofia comes to visit and draws her into her dazzling life. French director Rebecca Zlotowski plays with the tropes of the wily seductress, seeing it through the eyes of an impressionable female admirer and encouraging us to judge before forcing us to reconsider. In An Easy Girl she conjures a sultry coming-of-age story which is visually beautiful in its depiction of long summer nights and the unexpected places they lead. By the time the story ends the spell of the beautiful girl feels like something much sadder than it appears on the surface.

Sand Storm

This Israeli drama from promising filmmaker Elite Zexer previewed at the Berlin Film Festival in 2016 and won directing prizes at Sundance in the same year. The Hebrew film focuses on a teenage girl named Layla who is constricted by the beliefs of her Bedouin parents and on the forbidden romance which pulls her from this world. The film is bookended by two wedding ceremonies and punctuated throughout by revealing the misogyny which is rife in the traditions Layla has grown up in: a world where women are constrained to repeatedly sweeping desert dust off the floor and unable to say or do so much.

A Sun

A tale of two sons, one prodigious, the other a disgrace, and how this tears a family apart, is the central tension in Taiwanese director Chung Mong-Hong's masterful and moving A Sun. The film, which played at festivals in Toronto and Tokyo, is visually stunning as well as being a character study which feels almost documentary-like, thanks to exacting performances from the entire cast. As its title suggests, A Sun, is about the golden child whom the other has had to live in the shadow of, and how facing the light and darkness that brings can be hard to see.

The Trader

Depicting the life of Gela, a traveling trader living in poverty in the Republic of Georgia, this short documentary won a prize at Sundance film festival in 2017. The 23-minute film manages to compress the harsh realities of poor rural life without sensationalising, following Gela as he trades clothes for potatoes in a place where money is often useless but potatoes keep people alive. The Trader makes for difficult watching, but at a time where wealth inequality continues to grow it is vital we don't look away.

Roma

Netflix's Oscar-winning masterpiece from Gravity director Alfonso Cuarón, Roma is a black and white portrait of an indigenous domestic worker in Mexico City and the family she works for. The director handpicked unknown actors to bring the story to life, including Yalitza Aparicio, who makes her astonishing debut as lead character Cleo. Shots of a floor being washed with the reflection of a plane overhead, a sweep across a department store to show a riot outside and – honestly – some genuinely stunning shots of dog poo are just a few of the memorable sights in this film that has its fair share of devastating moments.

I'm No Longer Here

The steady beat of Cumbia music provides the undercurrent to this story about teenagers living in the Mexican city of Monterrey. The Spanish film from Fernando Frias follows a misunderstanding between a young man and a local cartel which forces him to leave behind his family and friends in fear. Visually engrossing, with scenes in hazy bars almost fogging the screen and shots sweeping over the twinkling lights of the city as dark clouds loom overhead, I'm No Longer Here explores the communities and families which gangs break rather than glorifying their violence.

Monos

Based on the conflicts of director Alejandro Landes's native Colombia, Monos is a mind-bending story of war and loss of innocence. The film has earned comparisons to Apocalypse Now for its unflinching portrayal of conflict, but in Monos Landes turns the team of adolescent guerrillas fighting an unknown war in an unknown place into a saga that feels primordial and hallucinogenic.

Okja

Bong Joon Ho's colourful fable explores the crisis of overpopulation, the ethics of raising animals for slaughter, the villainous greed of corporations and the ability of childhood innocence to speak truth to power. For the most part, however, it is just the story of a girl's love for her giant pig-hippo friend. Featuring excellent performances from Jake Gyllenhaal, Tilda Swinton and Paul Dano, Okja is a feel-good movie that will also make you feel very bad.

Spirited Away

You may well have watched the Studio Ghibli films, which include gems such as My Neighbour Totoro, Howl's Moving Castle and Princess Mononoke, dubbed into English. But watching them in their original Japanese – just change the audio on Netflix – grounds them in the context they were written in. If you haven't explored any of the back catalogue, Spirited Away follows little girl, Chihiro whose parents are turned into pigs and finds herself is trapped in a dark realm when trying to free them.

A Twelve-Year Night

Uruguayan filmmaker Alvaro Brechner here looks at the 12 years of imprisonment in solitary confinement which members of Tupamaros, a left-wing urban guerrilla group active in the Sixties and Seventies, were subjected to. One member of the group was José Mujica, the man who would go on to become the country's president after the torture he endured. The story focuses on the unending captivity and their moment of freedom rather than shooting forward into the happy ending resolution, underscoring how gruelling and slow those years were.

Atlantics

The Cannes Jury prize-winning feature debut from director Mati Diop is a supernatural love story told between two different sides of Dakar: the wealthy suburbs and the dusty building sites. When young Ada and construction worker Souleimane fall in love while she is promised to someone else it begins a sensual but forbidden romance. A modern kind of Romeo and Juliet which turns into a ghost story as their romance goes wrong, Atlantics offers a dark social commentary on inequality and difference.