foreign films

This year’s nominees to a Golden Globe in the Best Motion Picture - Foreign Language category: Thomas Vinterberg, ANOTHER ROUND (Denmark), Jayro Bustamante, LA LLORONA (Guatemala/France), Edoardo Ponti, THE LIFE AHEAD (Italy), Lee Isaac Chung, MINARI (USA) and Filippo Meneghetti, TWO OF US (France/USA) spoke to us about their films, the challenges of bringing them to fruition and the significance of a Golden Globe nomination. .

Lee Isaac Chung was the big winner at the 2020 Sundance Festival, where his film Minari took the Audience Award in the Dramatic Competition and also the Grand Jury Prize. And Lee Isaac Chung is in the news now more than ever.

France-based Italian director Filippo Meneghetti picked an unlikely theme for his debut: the love story between Nina (Barbara Sukowa) and Madeleine (Martine Chevallier), both in their seventies. Yet, even though Two Of Us constitutes a rare occasion in cinema’s canon, it fits right in with a brand new trend that seeks to unveil the struggles of women as they painstakingly emerge out of their homebound obscurity.

A group of friends faces a mid-life crisis with a few (ok, a lot of) stiff drinks. A Holocaust survivor and an orphan find new meaning in their unexpected kinship.

A Sun is the latest film by Taiwanese director, writer, and cinematographer Chung Mong-Hong. In 2019, the film won Taiwan’s most prestigious Golden Horse Awards including Best Film and Best Director.

A hopeful and inspiring reflection on the real-life hardships faced by a young transgender woman seeking to embrace who she is, Valentina marks the feature film debut of Brazilian writer-director Cássio Pereira dos Santos. The film follows Valentina, a seventeen-year-old girl who moves to the countryside of Brazil with her mother, Márcia (played by renowned actress Guta Stresser), for a fresh start.

There is no way around learning about Kyrgyzstan without learning about Issyk-Kul, the largest lake in this Central Asian country.  Surrounded by the snow-capped mountains of Tian Shan, it never freezes, that is why it was named “warm lake” by Kyrgyz ancestors.

Historical dramas and serial killer thrillers typically conjure their own set of cinematic tropes. But the sneakily ambitious Effigy: Poison and the City unfolds against these shared backdrops in an intriguing manner.

The Auschwitz Report is based on the true story of German documents smuggled out of the titular concentration camp in April 1944, which proved the horrifying scale of the Third Reich’s attempted “Final Solution. ” At the movie’s center is Noel Czuczor, who stars as Alfréd Wetzler, one of two men who, after more than a full year of meticulous escape planning, set off on a treacherous journey through mountains and underground tunnels.

Claiming to be “based on true events,” Twiceborn tells the story of Satoru Ichijo, a highly successful businessman who gives up everything to pursue his higher calling. The protagonist is based on real-life spiritual leader Ryuho Okawa and his rise as the founder and CEO of Happy Science Group, a religious sect that claims eleven million followers in the world.