Golden Globes 2023 Non-English Language Film Submissions

In Mediterranean Fever, Palestinian director Maha Haj indirectly chose to address the crisis of the Palestinians and their existential plight poetically seen through the unexpected friendship between two men. Living in Haifa, Waleed (Amer Hlehel), is a depressed man in his forties who lacks the desire to live.

Muru reminds us about the wealth that films from even the most remote corners of the planet have to offer. How else would we be able to gain insights, however fleeting, into worlds most of us don’t even know exist?In this particular Non-English Language film we meet the Ngāi Tūhoe community of Rūātoki, the home of indigenous people in New Zealand.

For Madeleine, 92, (French icon Line Renaud) it is the last journey. A one-way taxi ride through Paris to the retirement home will be her final destination.

The Burning Sea is an environmental thriller set on an oil rig in the North Sea. So much drilling has taken place in the North Sea that the seabed has now become unstable.

The comfort of the stranger comes quietly and mysteriously in an Italian town at the height of the pandemic, and leaves everyone's lives better than it was.   In a nutshell this is the essence of Una Sconosciuta (The Lady), one of the Italian entries in the Golden Globes non-English language film category.

Holy Spider is a fictional story inspired by the real-life story of the Iranian construction worker Saeed Hanaei (Mehdi Bajestani), who was arrested in 2001 for killing 16 prostitutes in Mashad, Iran. It follows investigative journalist Rahimi (Zar Amir Ebrahimi), who travels to the holy city of Mashad with the intention of trying to help solve the long-running case when the police fail to catch the serial killer.

A Film About Couples is a feature film about two filmmakers who are asked to make a documentary about couples. Natalia Cabral and Oriol Estrada are a couple in their thirties and are parents to a little daughter, Lia.

The Kashmir Files storyline centers on the 1990s exodus of Kashmiri Hindus from Indian-administered Kashmir. The director of The Kashmir Files, Vivek Agnihotri, told us about what made him passionate about the film.

Where the Wind Blows is a crime thriller covering many decades of police corruption on the Hong Kong Island and Kowloon/New Territories at a time when both areas were still under British colonial rule. The original title was going to be Theory of Ambitions, given that the film tells the story of two policemen who want to leave their thankless low-class existence behind by cooperating, and later dominating, the local triads (Chinese gangs, comparable to the Yakuza in Japan).

What happens when the person who is supposed to help you overcome your vulnerability exploits that vulnerability instead? That is the question posed by the action thriller Indemnity set in South Africa, that country’s contender for best Non-English Language Film. Told mostly in Afrikaans, with some English, the film features Africa Movie Academy Award winner Jarrid Geduld (10,000 BC and Ellen: Die Storie van Ellen Pakkies) as Theo, a former firefighter who is suffering from PTSD after a rescue goes wrong.