Why we should all be watching world cinema

Something I’ve been trying to implement with my film choices over the past few years is a wider range of international – specifically foreign language – films. Mass media disproportionately markets British and American releases, and while this makes sense to a certain degree, it doesn’t mean that there isn’t a whole world of cinema beyond what we’re advertised! Finding foreign language films I enjoy has been such a wonderful experience; it lets you learn about other cultures, filmmaking styles and languages in such a laid back and approachable way. I’d like to discuss some of the fun I’ve had with world cinema, and why I think we should all try and broaden our film horizons.

I’m currently at a count of eight foreign languages I’ve watched films in: German, French, Dutch, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Spanish and Hindi. Out of these, Italian is definitely my most frequented, and it’s an invaluable tool for trying to learn the language. You pick up common phrases through foreign language media in a more natural and engraining way than simply by doing your daily Duolingo, plus it helps you get to grips with things like pronunciation, intonation and hearing the language at a normal speed. Anime fans can back me up here – how many Japanese phrases do you pick up simply by watching anime? For a language you are interested in learning, immersion like watching films is a must.

One of my favourite foreign language films – and perhaps one of my favourite films full stop, it’s in my Letterboxd Top 4! – is Martin Eden, an Italian film directed by Pietro Marcello and based on a book of the same name by Jack London. You may know American author London from such classics as The Call of the Wild and White Fang. The decision to make an Italian adaptation of a book keenly entrenched in its American setting may seem odd, but the foreign setting reinvigorates the personal and political themes that are vital to Eden’s character and narrative. As stated by Dennis Zhou in this interview about Marcello’s film, ‘there’s something very useful to be said about that, which is to have a foreign filmmaker take an American source material, tweak it slightly so that it becomes refreshed and new for American audiences.’ This idea, of seeing familiar themes rehomed in different cultures and locations, is something I love about watching foreign films: you get to see just how universal human nature is, and how this can be explored in a huge variety of ways.

Another thing about watching foreign language films is the element of authenticity. I saw Ridley Scott’s 2023 Napoleon in December of that year, and one of my (many) critiques of that film was the cognitive dissonance of Napoleon Bonaparte himself being voiced through Joaquin Phoenix’s American accent (despite almost all other characters speaking in French accents?). My exploration of foreign films has shown me how much more poignant a story can be when told in the language it belongs to. My favourite example of this is Edward Berger’s 2022 remake All Quiet on the Western Front (Im Westen nichts Neues), a film that follows a group of young German men through the final years of WW1. This film is standout in so many ways, and created huge buzz when it was released for good reason, but I’d like to focus on the experience, as an English person, of watching the events of WW1 from a German perspective. So many of the major war films focus on the Allies’ experience – 1917 and Dunkirk to name just two recent examples – and it’s easy for cultural understanding of these events to become a black-and-white ‘good versus evil’ situation. Watching this film changes that; not only does it depict the horrors of the First World War in a visceral, haunting way that I’ve yet to see another film accomplish, but it gives the other side, the so called ‘bad guys’ the floor, and proves that in the trenches this visceral horror was universal, whether Ally or Axis, English or German. To me, the film being in German, in its authentic language, was key to this facet of it. It just wouldn’t have had the same impact had it been an English or American cast portraying this German story, and the fact that because of this many English and American audiences may give it a miss is, to me, a real tragedy.

If that’s not enough to convince you to give some foreign films a try, I asked the President of Durham World Cinema Society, Aliya Wardill, for some of her thoughts!

Q: Why do you think engaging with world cinema is important?

A: I think engaging with world cinema allows us to explore a diversity of cultures, perspectives, and storytelling traditions which are often ignored by the western world. Although we are slowly seeing more films from around the world in UK cinemas, there is still a distinct bias towards western/Hollywood films as the preferred object of our consumption. This is why I am passionate about running World Cinema Society: we are committed to elevating lesser known global cinema and crossing borders through the creative exploration of shared human experiences.

Q: What do you enjoy most about engaging with world cinema?

A: I really enjoy engaging with world cinema as I feel I have deepened my understanding of different cultures across the world, and also the universal need for coming to terms with and reinterpreting collective human experiences such as grief through the medium of film. Our society also collaborates with many uni-wide cultural societies, which not only broadens our reach but also creates opportunities for cultural exchange, meeting people from all different cultures, and coming together through film.

(You can find the society’s Instagram, where they advertise their film screenings and other events here!)

Whether it be for language learning, examining film techniques or simply diversifying your consumption, give world cinema a try! There are so many different cultures out there, and their art might speak to you in a way Hollywood can’t – you’ll never know until you try.

Image by NastyaSensei on Pexels.