Not All Great Movies Are in English – See The Best Ones Here!

Movies allow us to travel through time and space and learn about amazing real life stories. They make us laugh and cry and show us the most amazing love stories, or even scare us with creepy monsters! One really interesting fact though, is that sometimes, the most amazing movies are not in English. Fortunately, we can enjoy them with the magic of subtitled and dubbed versions, giving us access to entertainment from other cultures.

Here is a list of some of the most amazing non-speaking English movies of the last decades:

Life is Beautiful – La Vita e Bella (Italy, 1997)

When Guido, an Italian-Jewish librarian, and his son Giosué become victims of the Holocaust in the Second World War, he uses his humor and his imagination to protect him from the dangers around the Nazi camp. If you think a love story has to be between two lovers, you never imagined how great a love story between a father and a son could be.

Jodaeiye Nader az Simin – A Separation (Iran, 2011)

A married couple from Iran has to face their most difficult decision: move to another country for a better life for them and their son, or stay in Iran and look after his father, who has is in an advanced stage of Alzheimer’s disease. This places their life as husband and wife in danger. This is a great reminder that dilemmas like this do not happen only to people in the US.

REC (Spain, 2007)

Filmed with a HandyCam like “The Blair Witch Project”, this Spanish horror movie shows a television reporter and her cameraman documenting the night shift of firefighters in Madrid. Following an emergency call from a dark apartment building, they are quickly locked in, as a quarantine protection and have to deal with the most unexpected and terrifying truth. It has its own Hollywood remake called “Quarantine”, released just one year later.

Nueve Reinas – Nine Queens (Argentina, 2000)

An experienced con artist and a more rookie one who just met at a gas station, have the opportunity of carrying out a major scam. By selling some rare counterfeit stamps to a rich and corrupt Spanish collector who faces deportation and has no time to prove if they are real or fake. This classic Argentinean film shows the fury of the Buenos Aires Downtown and has one of the most surprising ending tweets in history of Latin American cinema.

The Blind Swordsman – Zatoichi (Japan, 2003)

A blind masseur arrives at a small Japanese town controlled by gangs in the 19^th By using his incredible skills as a swordsman, he joins forces with two geishas who seek revenge against the man who killed their parents. The murderer is very well protected by a former samurai who must work for an evil man in order to pay for his agonizing wife’s medication. This movie is starred, written, produced and directed by the amazing Takeshi Kitano.

Some of the most amazing stories are out there, not only in Hollywood, but also in some remote countries waiting for you to enjoy. So, open your mind, break the language barriers and skip the frontiers. Get some popcorn and read the subtitles… it’s show time!