Dave Tompkins :: DVD Library :: Academy Awards (Oscars) :: Best Foreign Film


(text-only version)

2013  The Great Beauty (2013)

Jep Gambardella has seduced his way through the lavish nightlife of Rome for decades, but after his 65th birthday and a shock from the past, Jep looks past the nightclubs and parties to find a timeless landscape of absurd, exquisite beauty.

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2012  Amour (2012)

Georges and Anne are in their eighties. They are cultivated, retired music teachers. Their daughter, who is also a musician, lives abroad with her family. One day, Anne has an attack. The couple's bond of love is severely tested.

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2011  A Separation (2012)

A married couple are faced with a difficult decision - to improve the life of their child by moving to another country or to stay in Iran and look after a deteriorating parent who has Alzheimer's disease.

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2010  In a Better World (2010)

The lives of two Danish families cross each other, and an extraordinary but risky friendship comes into bud. But loneliness, frailty and sorrow lie in wait.

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2009  The Secret in Their Eyes (2009)

A retired legal counselor writes a novel hoping to find closure for one of his past unresolved homicide cases and for his unreciprocated love with his superior - both of which still haunt him decades later.

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2008  Departures (2008)

A newly unemployed cellist takes a job preparing the dead for funerals.

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2007  The Counterfeiters (2007)

The Counterfeiters is the true story of the largest counterfeiting operation in history, set up by the Nazis in 1936...

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2006  The Lives of Others (2006)

In 1984 East Berlin, an agent of the secret police, conducting surveillance on a writer and his lover, finds himself becoming increasingly absorbed by their lives.

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2005  Tsotsi (2005)

Six days in the violent life of a young Johannesburg gang leader (Chweneyagae).

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2004  The Sea Inside (2004)

The real-life story of Spaniard Ramon Sampedro, who fought a 30 year campaign in favor of euthanasia and his own right to die.

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2003  The Barbarian Invasions (2003)

During his final days, a dying man is reunited with old friends, former lovers, his ex-wife, and his estranged son.

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2002  Nowhere in Africa (2002)

A German Jewish refugee family moves to and adjusts to a farm life in 1930's Kenya.

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2001  No Man's Land (2001)

Bosnia and Herzegovina during 1993 at the time of the heaviest fighting between the two warring sides. Two soldiers from opposing sides in the conflict, Nino and Ciki, become trapped in no man's land, whilst a third soldier is becomes a living booby trap.

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2000  Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)

Two warriors in pursuit of a stolen sword and a notorious fugitive are led to an impetuous, physically-skilled, teenage nobleman's daughter, who is at a crossroads in her life.

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1999  All About My Mother (1999)

Young Esteban want to become a writer and also to discover the identity of his father, carefully concealed by the mother Manuela.

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1998  Life is Beautiful (1997)

A Jewish man has a wonderful romance with the help of his humour, but must use that same quality to protect his son in a Nazi death camp.

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1997  Character (1997)

Jacob Katadreuffe lives mute with his mother, has no contact with his father who only works against him and wants to become a lawyer, at all costs.

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1996  Kolya (1996)

Franta Louka is a concert cellist in Soviet-occupied Czechoslovakia, a confirmed bachelor and a lady's man...

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1995  Antonia's Line (1995)

A Dutch matron establishes and, for several generations, oversees a close-knit, matriarchal community where feminism and liberalism thrive.

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1994  Burnt by the Sun (1994)

Russia, 1936: revolutionary hero Colonel Kotov is spending an idyllic summer in his dacha with his young wife and six-year-old daughter Nadia and other assorted family and friends...

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1993  The Age of Beauty (1992)

In 1931, a young soldier (Fernando) deserts from the army and falls into a country farm, where he is welcomed by the owner (Manolo) due to his political ideas...

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1992  Indochine (1992)

This story is set in 1930, at the time when French colonial rule in Indochina is ending. An unmarried French woman who works in the rubber fields...

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1991Mediterraneo (1991)
1990Journey of Hope (1990)
1989  Cinema Paradiso (1988)

A filmmaker recalls his childhood, when he fell in love with the movies at his village's theater and formed a deep friendship with the theater's projectionist.

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1988  Pelle the Conqueror (1987)

The end of the 19th century. A boat filled with Swedish emigrants comes to the Danish island of Bornholm...

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1987  Babette's Feast (1987)

In 19th century Denmark, two adult sisters live in an isolated village with their father, who is the honored pastor of a small Protestant church that is almost a sect unto itself...

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1986The Assault (1986)
1985  The Official Story (1985)

Alicia Marnet de Ibáñez is a high school history professor and a well-to-do housewife in Buenos Aires...

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1984  Dangerous Moves (1984)
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1983  Fanny and Alexander (1982)

The title characters are children in the exuberant and colorful Ekdahl household in a Swedish town early in the twentieth century...

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1982Begin the Beguine (1982)
1981Mephisto (1981)
1980  Moscow Does Not Believe In Tears (1980)

This is a life story of three girlfriends from youth to autumn ages. Their dreams and wishes, love, disillusions. Different careers. And big late love.

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1979  The Tin Drum (1979)

Danzig in the 1920s/1930s. Oskar Matzerath, son of a local dealer, is a most unusual boy. Equipped with...

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1978Get Out Your Handkerchiefs (1978)
1977Madame Rosa (1977)
1976  Black and White in Color (1976)

French colonists in Africa, several months behind in the news, find themselves at war with their German neighbors...

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1975  Deruzu uzara (1975)

A Russian army explorer who is rescued in Siberia by a rugged Asian hunter renews his friendship with the woodsman years later when he returns as the head of a larger expedition...

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1974  Amarcord (1973)

A year in the life of a small Italian coastal town in the nineteen-thirties, as is recalled by a director...

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1973  Day for Night (1973)

A committed film director struggles to complete his movie while coping with a myriad of crises, personal and professional, among the cast and crew.

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1972  The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972)

A surreal, virtually plotless series of dreams centered around six middle-class people and their consistently interrupted attempts to have a meal together.

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1971The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (1971)
1970Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (1970)
1969  Z (1969)

Following the murder of a prominent leftist, an investigator tries to uncover the truth while government officials attempt to cover up their roles.

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1968  War and Peace (1967)

Eight-hour epic based on the eponymous book by Leo Tolstoy.

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1967  Closely Watched Trains (1966)

An apprentice train dispatcher at a village station seeks his first sexual encounter and becomes despondent when he is unable to perform.

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1966  A Man and a Woman (1966)

A man and a woman meet by accident on a Sunday evening at their childrens' boarding school. Slowly they reveal themselves to each other...

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1965  Shop on Main Street (1965)

Slovakia during WW2. Tono lives a poor life, but the authorities offer him a take over the Jewish widow Lautman's little shop for sewing material...

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1964  Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow (1963)

Stories about three very different women and the men they attract.

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1963  8 1/2 (1963)

A harried movie director retreats into his memories and fantasies.

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1962Sundays and Cybele (1962)
1961  Through a Glass Darkly (1961)

A young woman, Karin, has recently returned to the family island after spending some time in a mental hospital...

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1960  The Virgin Spring (1960)

Set in beautiful 14th century Sweden, it is the sombre, powerful fable of wealthy land-owning parents whose daughter...

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1959  Black Orpheus (1959)

A retelling of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth, set during the time of the Carnaval in Rio de Janeiro.

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1958  Mon Oncle (1958)

Monsieur Hulot visits the technology-driven world of his sister, brother-in-law, and nephew, but he can't quite fit into the surroundings.

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1957  Nights of Cabiria (1957)

A waifish prostitute wanders the streets of Rome looking for true love but finding only heartbreak.

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1956  La Strada (1954)

A carefree girl is sold to a traveling entertainer, consequently enduring physical and emotional pain along the way.

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Count: 48 / 58