20 Best Foreign Movies on Pluto TV Right Now

20 Best Foreign Movies on Pluto TV Right Now

October 28, 2024

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When you can stream movies for free, all in exchange for a few ads, it can be hard to believe that the streaming service in question would have a great selection. Yet, for some reason, Pluto TV is able to stream thousands of movies, some of which are hidden gems made available to viewers for free. This makes the site a great place to start if you want to watch underrated classics not only from American independent film productions, but also from all over the world. Here’s some of the best foreign movies available on Pluto TV:

1. BPM

best

8.9

Country

France

Director

Robin Campillo

Actors

Adèle Haenel, Aloïse Sauvage, Antoine Reinartz, Arnaud Valois

Moods

Character-driven, Instructive, True-story-based

Autobiographical in nature, 120 BPM is French screenwriter Robin Campillo’s first feature film. It revolves around the Parisian chapter of the AIDS advocacy group ACT UP, which Campillo was a member of in the early 1990s, and the love between Nathan, the group’s newest member, who is HIV negative, and Sean, one of its founding and more radical members, who is positive and suffers the consequences of contracting AIDS. Using fake blood and spectacular direct action, ACT UP advocated more and better research of treatment, prevention, and awareness. This was at a time when many, implicitly or explicitly, viewed AIDS as a gay disease, even as a punishment for the gay community’s propensity to pleasure and partying. The latter is reflected by the film’s title, 120 bpm being the average number of beats per minute of a house track. Arnaud Rebotini’s original score echoes the ecstasy-driven house music hedonism of the time with some effective original cuts, albeit with a melancholic streak. Because, for all the love, friendship, and emotion of the ACT UP crew that BPM so passionately portrays, anger and sadness pervade the lives of these young people as the lack of effective treatment threatens to claim the lives of their loved ones.

2. Black Rain (1989)

best

8.3

Country

Japan

Director

Shōhei Imamura

Actors

Akiji Kobayashi, Etsuko Ichihara, Fujio Tokita, Hideji Ōtaki

Moods

Challenging, Character-driven, Discussion-sparking

Not to be confused with the American cop thriller with the same name, Shōhei Imamura’s Black Rain is about the atomic bomb, but it’s not really concerned about nuclear warfare. Sure, the film opens with gruesome shots of the day the bomb dropped, not sparing the viewers from the gore and the titular nuclear fallout, that in black and white looks the same. And yes, much of the conflict occurs because of the lingering effects of the radiation. However, Imamura is much more concerned with the way Japanese society had tried to deal with it through going back to tradition– through going through the motions of matchmaking and propriety and social status and through excluding those who suffered directly from the bomb. Black Rain has a singular perspective, one that stands out due to the country’s denial of war crimes.

3. Penguin Highway (2018)

best

8.2

Country

Japan

Director

Hiroyasu Ishida

Actors

Hidetoshi Nishijima, Kana Kita, Landen Beattie, Mamiko Noto

Moods

Quirky, Sweet, Warm

Surreal, strange, yet wondrous, Penguin Highway never takes a straightforward approach to its story. Penguins pop up out of nowhere, leading the nerdy and precocious Aoyama to study them via empirical observation and logical deduction. These studies don’t end up with a feasible explanation– in fact, by the final act, the film abandons all laws of physics. But the journey to that act feels intuitively right. This journey feels like an indescribable formative experience. Aoyama may be obsessed with growing up and committing to the reasonable adult mindset, but he is still a child. From fending off bullies to forming connections with others, his childhood imagination served him better than science could. The film reveres this discovery as well as it should.

4. Train to Busan (2016)

best

8.0

Country

Korea, South Korea

Director

Sang-ho Yeon, Yeon Sang-ho

Actors

Ahn So-hee, An So-hee, Baek Seung-hwan, Cha Chung-hwa

Moods

Action-packed, Intense, Thrilling

A zombie virus breaks out and catches up with a father as he is taking his daughter from Seoul to Busan, South Korea’s second-largest city. Watch them trying to survive to reach their destination, a purported safe zone.

The acting is spot-on; the set pieces are particularly well choreographed. You’ll care about the characters. You’ll feel for the father as he struggles to keep his humanity in the bleakest of scenarios.

It’s a refreshingly thrilling disaster movie, a perfect specimen of the genre.

5. House of Hummingbird (2018)

best

8.0

Country

South Korea

Director

Female director, Kim Bora

Actors

In-gi Jeong, Jeong In-gi, Jung In-gi, Kil Hae-yeon

Moods

Lovely, Slice-of-Life, Slow

It’s 1994, and Seoul is facing massive, rapid changes. The unrest is reflected by a lot of its residents, including Eun-hee, a disaffected teen with a less-than-stellar home and school life. She manages to get by with the help of friends and lovers, that is until they change too, and Eun-hee is forced to grapple with the volatility of it all. 

Sensitively told and genuinely captivating, House of Hummingbird is a stellar debut by writer-director Kim Bo-ra. Her command shines in how young actress Park Ji-hoo dynamically portrays Eun-hee, in how the story meanders but never loses footing, and in how each frame displays a quiet gorgeousness as the primary colors of her youth pop against the faded backdrop of urbanized Seoul. The delicate balance of all these elements is sure to evoke a sincere, profound feeling in every viewer. 

6. Shadow (2018)

best

8.0

Country

China, Hong Kong

Director

Yimou Zhang, Zhang Yimou

Actors

Chao Deng, Deng Chao, Feng Bai, Guan Xiaotong

Moods

Action-packed, Mind-blowing, Thrilling

Director Zhang Yimou, who already has remarkable wuxia films like Hero and House of Flying Daggers under his belt, delivers another exceptional epic. Set during China’s Three Kingdoms era (220–280 AD), Shadow revolves around a great king and his people, who are expelled from their homeland but will aspire to reclaim it. The story requires a fair amount of patience at first, as it slowly builds a world consisting of various characters with different motives, before the real action begins. The journey through Shadow is visually pleasing thanks to its stunning cinematography, impressively choreographed combat, and overall brilliant production design. Packed with sequences that will take your breath away, it is an inventive martial arts epic with one amazing scene after another.

7. Cairo Conspiracy (2022)

7.7

Country

Denmark, Finland, France

Director

Tarik Saleh

Actors

Fares Fares, Jalal Altawil, Makram J. Khoury, Mehdi Dehbi

Moods

Dramatic, Intense, Original

When he’s accepted into the prestigious Islamic university Al-Azhar, fisherman’s son Adam (Tawfeek Barhom) gets an eye-opening education — but not the kind he expected. A place associated with notions of purity is imagined as a hotbed of hypocrisy and corruption here, as naive young Adam finds himself unwittingly embroiled in a state plot to seize control of Al-Azhar (because, as one government official puts it, “We can’t accept having two pharaohs in the land”). Cairo Conspiracy’s intricate plot confronts monsters in government and strips away religious leaders’ veneer of divinity as a reminder that they’re merely fallible men. What’s more, the film grapples with the knotty mess of politics raging inside the institution’s walls in such a way that even its palatial courtyard feels claustrophobic. Rife with paranoia and subterfuge, Cairo Conspiracy feels utterly unique thanks to this skillful transposing of the shadowy machinations of courtly intrigue dramas and ’70s paranoid thrillers into a very contemporary Egyptian setting.

8. Entre Nos (2009)

7.6

Country

Colombia, United States of America

Director

Gloria La Morte, Paola Mendoza

Actors

Andres Munar, Annie Henk, Anthony Chisholm, Clem Cheung

Moods

Depressing, Discussion-sparking, Emotional

A mother and her two children move from Colombia to Queens, New York to join the father. Once there, he abandons them and moves to Miami.

With no family to fall back on, barely speaking English, an inexistent social welfare system and two little kids who require care; the mother quickly runs out of options. At first, she tries to sell empanadas in the street, then tries to become a temporary worker, but a mixture of obstacles keeps getting in the way.

Entre Nos is about the precariousness of the immigrant experience: about how quickly things can go wrong. But it’s also about how survival instincts and motherly love can stand in the face of complete desperation.

9. Let the Right One In (2008)

7.5

Country

France, Germany, Norway

Director

Tomas Alfredson

Actors

Anders T. Peedu, Henrik Dahl, Ika Nord, Johan Sömnes

Moods

Raw, Slow

Somehow an art house film, horror, and romance all in one, Let the Right One In explores the boundaries of its genres with unprecedented finesse, and offers a stunning alternative for those disappointed with recent vampire love stories. From its haunting minimalist imagery to its incredible score, it is persistently beautiful. The film follows twelve-year-old Oskar and Eli, drawing on numerous aspects of traditional undead lore, and still manages an impressive feat in feeling entirely fresh and devoid of cliche. Those in search of a terrifying movie might need to look elsewhere, but if what you’re looking for is simply a great watch, don’t pass this one up.

10. Güeros (2014)

7.5

Country

Mexico

Director

Alonso Ruizpalacios

Actors

Adrián Ladrón, Alonso Ruizpalacios, Bernardo Velasco, Ilse Salas

Moods

Character-driven, Easy, Raw

Modern day coming-of-age ennui isn’t a new subject at all, but there’s a charm to the way this was presented in Güeros. In his first film, Alonso Ruizpalacios beautifully shoots each scene in black and white, forming striking images of what the capital used to be and taking new approaches in depicting certain scenes (for example, that panic attack with the POV shot covered in feathers!). The cast also excellently portray this millennial emotion well, with their eyes glazed over as they try to seek moments of connection and grounding, as they try to make sense of it all. While some of the politics might fly under the radar to people outside the country, Güeros nevertheless serves as an interesting portrait of the time, as well as an interesting debut for one of Mexico’s avant-garde filmmakers.

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