10 Best Movies on Film Movement Plus Right Now

Many people would rather see happy, positive depictions of people like them, but sometimes, it’s important to see one’s worst sides– the sides that we don’t really like to see, but should have some awareness of, in order to address them. It’s because of this director Lee Tamahori initially thought that adapting the Maori novel Once Were Warriors would end up a flop, but through focusing on Beth Heke and her children, through ensuring that each of them have more screentime rather than only on the parents, Tamahori depicts the alienation the Heke family feels on the fringes, an alienation only healed when they choose to embrace more of their culture. Once Were Warriors isn’t an easy watch, with all the difficulties that the family goes through, but it’s a fiercely intense debut that proved to be one of the best films from New Zealand.

Human Capital is a rich and absorbing tale of two families tied together by love, money and a hit-and-run accident. One family is wealthy, the other struggling to get by in the days after the 2008 economic meltdown. Human Capital dexterously contrasts the social calculations the characters make about who can afford to step outside the lines of law and morality. The story is told from different perspectives, a device that serves to give the tale and the characters greater depth. In Italian with English subtitles.

The Earth Is Blue as an Orange chronicles the lives of a single mother and her four children as they live in the war-torn Donbas region of Ukraine. Despite the constant threat of violence, the family finds solace in the arts (more specifically in filmmaking). While striving for normalcy in these tumultuous times, they channel their efforts into creating a film about the effect of war on their family. Even as they try to lead individual lives, nurturing this collective project, bombs, debris, and their reality is unavoidable. 

This film is a moving testament to the power of art, creativity, and hope in the darkest times. 

In Between is a beautiful and poignant film that offers a sensitive and nuanced exploration of the lives and experiences of three Palestinian women living in Tel Aviv. The film follows their struggles to reconcile their traditional and cultural identities with their desire for independence, freedom, and self-expression. The stunning visuals, evocative and emotional score, and brilliant performances of the cast combine to create a powerful and moving portrait of resilience, sisterhood, and hope. Profoundly human and deeply affecting, In Between offers a fresh and important perspective on the complex realities of life in Israel and Palestine.

The emotional sterility of modern life comes under the microscope of this understated Korean drama in which a young woman who has built self-preserving walls around her lonely existence begins to wonder if the trade-off is worth it. Outside of the soul-sucking call center job at which Jina (Gong Seung-Yeon) excels, her interactions with others are purely parasocial: she streams mukbangs on her phone as she eats alone, wakes up to the blare of her always-on TV, and checks in on her aging father via the security camera she’s surreptitiously installed in his home. When she reluctantly agrees to train the chatty, warm newbie (Jeong Da-eun) at work, Jina is confronted with a direct challenge to her aloofness, but the provocation is easily ignored until a similarly withdrawn neighbor is discovered long after his death.

This triggers a quarter-life crisis for Jina that’s predictably resolved, but Aloners transcends the neatness of this arc thanks to its quietly persistent challenging of the instinct to contort oneself to fit an inhumane world. Hong Sung-eun’s thoughtful first-time direction and Gong’s nuanced performance as a young woman waking up to the creeping dehumanization of herself make Aloners a genuinely thought-provoking reflection on 21st-century life.

When the country rises in rebellion against your dictatorial rule, we imagine that could be quite difficult. But it makes for a striking movie in 2014’s The President. Never naming an actual country, but based generally on real world revolutions, the film plucks a dictator and his grandson into the poverty that his regime has inflicted upon its people, and in turn, was inflicted back onto them and their cronies, in a cycle of revenge that doesn’t seem to end, and that won’t ever end, if someone’s starving. It’s not a film with an easy-to-match metaphor, but The President nonetheless is a striking portrait of a city violently changing hands.

After a long life lived in a home one chose, it can be hard to uproot your entire life, especially in a country that seems diametrically opposed in manners and values. Before his American produced hits like Brokeback Mountain and Life of Pi, Ang Lee made his debut through Pushing Hands, a film entirely shot in America but produced from Taiwan, exploring from the Chinese perspective the generational conflict between Asian immigrants and the mainlander parents that they brought to have a good life. It’s humorous at certain moments, with the steady demeanor of Chu contrasted to everyone around him, but Pushing Hands stems from the understanding of someone who’s directly lived through it, unfolding into a thoughtful, sentimental drama that quickly established Lee’s directorial voice.

Life can get tough if you move to another country. You have to adjust to the language, to the culture, and to the community you choose to move to, and that’s just if you decided to make the move intentionally. But some of these difficulties can be made much easier to bear with a good friend. Shun Li and the Poet is centered on a friendship between two immigrants in a Venetian island town, and although they come from other sides of the world, the kindnesses they share as strangers, and the intimacy they keep when they share more of their life stories, prove to be lovely. It might be a tad slow for some viewers, but the contemplation and celebration of their shared humanity makes for a lovely watch.

Vive L’Amour is a slow-building film that dives deep into the loneliness and longing of urban life, weaving together the lives of three lost souls searching for connection and meaning in a bustling city. Though the film’s slow pace and minimal dialogue brilliantly convey the characters’ inner turmoil, there are times when the (probably purposeful) lack of direction doesn’t quite land. You might also find that director Tsai Ming-liang’s evocative cinematography does not hold up this sparse yet bloated plot. Still, Vive L’Amour encapsulates the signature solemn air of Taiwanese cinema, presenting a contemplative exploration of human relationships and urban alienation. It may be polarizing, but one thing is for sure: it will leave you introspective and moved by its profound examination of the human condition.