100 Best Foreign Movies on Hoopla Right Now

Two best friends chase the ultimate high in this Italian movie set in the 90s. Vittorio and Cesare are inseparable, they get in trouble together, fight together, and party together. Suddenly, they start moving at different speeds and one of them wants out, effectively abandoning the other. 

Don’t be Bad is director Claudio Caligari’s last movie before his death, the last installment in his catalog of well-crafted drug-centered stories.

This heartbreaking Russian drama takes place in Leningrad six months after the end of the war. A boy is asked to do an impression of an animal, any animal, but the boy stands still. “Just do a dog then”, one person says, to which another remarks “he’s never seen one, they’ve all been eaten.”

In this bleak context, two friends meet again and try to restart their lives. Masha is a soldier who has just come back from the war in Berlin, and Iya, a tall woman nicknamed “Beanpole”, is a nurse who suffers from PTSD episodes that freeze her body. Both characters, so brilliantly acted, personify the thin line between desperation and hopefulness in this difficult but incredibly well-made drama.

When German forces occupy Paris in 1942, a close-knit Jewish family tearfully sends their two youngest sons, Jo and Maurice, to escape the city on foot, with promises that they will all eventually be reunited in the Free Zone in the South. Told from the perspective of Jo – and based on the 1973 memoir of Joseph Joffo – what follows is a story of adventure, discovery, loss, love and the resilience of family bonds. A tapestry of cherished memories woven together with traumatic ones, the tone shifts again and again as Jo and his brother reach the bright shores of Nice––before they are driven to hiding again. Above all else, this is a story about the power of a family’s love, and of children who rise against the odds by their own courage and tenacity.

Incorporating traditional animation, Surrealist art style, and scenes from Luis Buñuel’s own films, Buñuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles is a portrait of a brilliant yet eccentric artist who is stubborn in his ideals. The film is a series of dreams—visions from a life often disrupted by war and ideology—but is more structured and coherent than its inspirations, and striking in the commentary it makes on art. Within the film’s story, Buñuel’s character initially takes on a documentary project through a more dramatic and staged approach that separates him from his crew and his producer Acín. However, his nightmares stemming from childhood trauma eventually lead him to focus on the people he’s filming and advocating for. Historical yet surreal, highly political yet personal, this film is an apt celebration of a divisive artist.

The poetic title of this debut feature from Chilean filmmaker Francisca Alegría does not tell a lie: a cow does indeed sing. More than one, in fact, because the film uses an entire herd — plus a flock of birds and a school of fish — as a kind of Greek chorus to comment on human mistreatment of animals and the wider environment. The Cow Who Sang never approaches sanctimonious territory, gently weaving from these ideas an expansive and evenly empathetic worldview. The magical realism that allows the animals to speak is the same device that brings the long-dead Magdalena (Mia Maestro) back to life — and, as her family’s fraught history is gradually revealed, it’s movingly suggested that the objectification that the cows and the local polluted river are subjected to is part of the same culture of devaluation that marred the lives of Magdalena and her female descendants. If there’s one complaint to be had, it’s that the relatively short runtime limits the film’s ability to really expound on its many threads — the bond Magdalena instinctively forges with her trans granddaughter, for example. Ultimately, though, its symbolic storytelling and emotionally articulate cast allow The Cow Who Sang to communicate much of its sweeping philosophy to profound effect.

When a regime falls, what follows isn’t a clean slate– it lingers, and it haunts those that were able to survive, part due to what was done to them and part to what they have done. Marshland ostensibly is a police procedural investigating a series of women murdered in rural Spain, but it’s also a clash of ideologies between New Spain, that wants to unearth the injustices that haven’t been acknowledged, and Old Spain, that wants to let sleeping dogs lie. The two plot threads don’t weave together as neatly as it could be, but La Isla Minima still works on both fronts, recreating that feeling of betrayal within that key transition period of Spain.

When we think about dog films, we think about overly sentimental, feel-good flicks, with the dogs sometimes voiced by famous actors, that affirm the relationship between man and his best friend. White God is a dog movie, but it’s not that kind of dog movie. The dogs are not voiced, but yet they feel so personable as co-writer and director Kornél Mundruczó turns Hagen’s time in the street into a series of escapades, some exciting and some downright terrifying, where he evades the cruelty of man. And as the film alternates between Hagen and the young Lili, Mundruczó questions the ways we treat our furball best friends, the way we also treat those that are in our care.

Without a shadow of a doubt, one of the most gripping thrillers in recent years. It starts in a morgue where a corpse of a deceased femme fatale goes missing. Her husband is the first person to be suspected as evidence starts pointing to him for killing his wife and hiding the body. He is called by the police to the crime scene to help with the investigation that is led by a shady detective. The film then takes you on a journey filled with reflections on marriage, deceit and the character’s urge to safeguard whats their own and the territories they are willing to cross to keep it. Drawing you into the atmosphere from the very start, it refuses to let you go out of it. All while maintaining a simple premise.

Always follows the story of Jeong-hwa and Cheol-min, both very different individuals who are gentle in their own way. The story starts off by demonstrating how different the leads are in terms of their personality and their outlook on life. The plot can be a little predictable and cliche in some moments, but Always is not a complicated movie—though in addition to being a romance, it also includes some surprising violence that may intensify your viewing experience. Still, Always is about the two leads’ struggle against fate as they try to survive their tough situations, with strong chemistry between the lead actors from start to finish.

Soul Mate has a familiar premise, has a standard love triangle, and at times, goes through the same formulaic story beats that any moviegoer would recognize. However, what makes the film unique is that it’s not focused on which character should get the guy, but on the friendship between two women and what’s really driving them apart. In director Derek Tsang’s capable hands, we learn about their dynamic in fragments and through crucial moments. Gorgeous cinematography and editing turn memories golden in nostalgia. But it’s ultimately Zhou Dongyu and Sandra Ma’s performances that solidify the friendship. Theirs is a study of contrasts between the independent yet freeloading Ansheng versus the stable but yearning Qiyue. It’s the actresses who prove that the real soul connection can be found between these two women instead.