Niche foreign film recommendations anyone??

[b-lly]

is La Haine niche? I recommend it, a social thriller set in the poor Parisian suburbs. but it could bore you

I never watched them but the Bud Spencer and Terenz Hill comedy westerns are very famous in Italy

if you're also interested in tv series, I higly recommend the animated Tear Along the Dotted Line, an adult comedy drama by famous cartoonist Zerocalcare (adult not because it's crass but because of serious topics). I also recommend the second one he made, This World Can't Tear Me Down but it's less universal since it deals with local political problems

I want everyone outside of Italy to know about Fantozzi (first movie with eng subs on youtube!) but it's probably not even that funny to foreigners. or people who didn't grow up with it. and honestly some jokes have aged like milk. but now you know it exists

all of Ghibli movies count as foreign :) !

[almostcorporeal]

some of my favorite foreign films are Your Vice Is A Locked Room And Only I Have The Key directed by Sergio Martino which is a giallo (Italian horror genre) film, i worry it may be a bit slow though. Deep Red directed by Dario Argento is also of the same genre and i really enjoyed it as well.

Fallen Angels directed by Wong Kar-wai (who is well known for directing In The Mood For Love, one of my top 5's) was also really enjoyable and is more niche than In The Mood For Love (although i super recommend In The Mood For Love as well). His movies are gorgeous too  they're both Hong Kong drama romances

I'm A Cyborg, But That's OK directed by Park Chan-wook (of Oldboy and Handmaiden fame) was super cute and sweet, i watched it a while back and i still think of it frequently! it's a Korean romance drama comedy.

House (Hausu as it's sometimes written) directed by Nobuhiko Obayashi is fairly popular but i'm still recommending it because i adore it. it's a Japanese horror film.

i also love Wetlands directed by David Wnendt which is a bit crude but is a German drama comedy

[Memory]

I would recommend Gaspar Noé's 'Enter the Void' as it's quite a trippy and interesting movie - I am also a sucker for first person experiences like that. (I would also recommend 'Love' which was another of his movies)

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is also great. It's a 1920s German silent horror film directed by Robert Wiene - it's basically like watching someone's abstract nightmare.

and ofcourse Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror - another German movie, this time a 1922 silent Expressionist vampire film directed by F. W. Murnau.

[_ghost_]

Andrei Tarkovsky is a bit like the Russian Stanly Kubrick. His films are meditative, melancholic, And just beautiful. He really encourages you to actively reflect rather than be a passive observer. Solaris(1972) is a good starting point. This is probably exactly what you'd consider 'mind numbingly boring' tho...

Solaris is fantastic! I watched it in a film class I took last year. We watched it back-to-back class periods with 2001: A Space Odyssey which is a somewhat overwhelming experience if you don't tend to like movies with long stretches of silence (which I don't), but it's absolutely worth doing as a double-feature. They're fun to compare as two different approaches to the purpose of a science fiction film; they have some similarities on a surface level but are incredibly different in ways that become very clear when you take the time to look at them in conversation with each other, highly recommend.

I haven't watched a lot of foreign films, but I have been meaning to watch more of the work of Pedro Almodóvar. I've seen ¿Qué he hecho yo para merecer esto! (What Have I Done to Deserve This?), which is really a really weird and uncomfortable film about the family structures, gender, and sexuality, and I know Almodóvar's other work tends to be exploring similar themes. It's in theory a comedy but in my experience it's more like you spend the whole time nervously laughing because you don't know how else to respond. It's social commentary delivered in subtle and unsettling ways. I don't know if I necessarily recommend it, but it's definitely a film you can watch.

[xolta]

Son of the white mare is a Hungarian animated film based of a myth of the same name and  makes me wish more people here in america would talk about these soviet area animated movies. You can find it on the internet archive.