The 50 Best Foreign Movies of 2023

Gangster films have an issue of glorifying organized crime, and in some ways The Pig, The Snake, and The Pigeon does the same. There are excellent, action-packed fight scenes that makes Ethan Juan as Chen Kui-lin look so damn cool, and the journey Chen takes as a stern criminal out for his legacy definitely romanticizes the character, but it’s so compelling to see him contemplate the purpose of his life through confronting those like him, who tend to move for the ideas of love and spiritual detachment. There are some moments when the pacing falters, but The Pig, The Snake, and the Pigeon delivers on its ending and reimagines the gangster as something to remember.

In The Promised Land, director Nikolaj Arcel (A Royal Affair) and Mads Mikkelsen reunite to create another intense, enjoyable drama based on true historical events. Mikkelsen is reliably gripping as Captain Ludwig Kahlen, but it’s his back-and-forths with the diabolical landowner Frederik Schinkel (Simon Bennebjerg) that are the standout scenes here. And though The Promised Land resembles modern Westerns in its macho standoffs and sweeping backdrops, it has a surprising and satisfying feminist bent to it. It’s a historical epic that doubles as a revenge thriller and succeeds in both cases.

Like people, places have things that change and things that remain the same. Most of us keep our thoughts about our hometowns to wistful conversations and the recesses of our memory, but Brazilian director Kleber Mendonça Filho instead captures Recife in Pictures of Ghosts. It’s a meandering tour, shifting from topic to topic, place to place with not that much structure, but through the journey, Kleber shares so much of himself (his home, his film sets, the theaters he formed his taste in), and Brazilian society, combining archived clips, personal memories, and even a ghostly mystery into one interesting map of Recife.

When vampires choose not to kill a human, it’s usually played up with so much drama, angst, and maybe a bit of romance. Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person on the other hand takes this choice as a comedic one. It may be a tad ludicrous for a vampire to refuse to drink blood on ethical grounds and trauma, but writer-director Ariane Louis-Seize takes this silly situation with a compelling sweetness, depicting Sasha with a familiar teen uncertainty made much more captivating with Sara Montpetit’s gothic ingénue charisma. Humanist Vampire does take a more quirky YA romance approach than expected from the title, but it’s funny, charming, and totally something new.

2023 was a great year for animation with films like Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, Nimona, and The Boy and the Heron, but there was another animated gem that flew under the radar and that’s jazz drama Blue Giant. It’s a pleasure to both the eyes and the ears as Dai Miyamoto blows on his saxophone, adding Hiromi Uehara’s incredible soundtrack and Yūichi Takahashi’s dynamic animation to the high contrast manga visuals, and the way the story unfolds the different avenues of pure passion these three have for jazz is absolutely captivating. Blue Giant is just so well-done that it’s no surprise it garnered a bigger-budgeted encore eight months after its premiere.

It can be very frustrating to watch something, hoping that the show, play, or film would be worth watching, and find yourself feeling worse after the experience. Most of us end up just changing the channel, leaving the theater, or finding something else to watch, but instead of doing any of this, Yannick depicts the titular audience member interrupting the show with a gun. You can already imagine how tense the situation is, but Quentin Dupieux infuses a comedic, meta touch in the way Yannick questions and holds the audience hostage, as his conversations with them and the cast reveal the different expectations we have from art.

Given the controversial subject matter, there’s something remarkably placid about the way About Dry Grasses proceeds. Amidst the snowy white steppes of Eastern Anatolia, writer-director Nuri Bilge Ceylan slowly lets the plot unfold through multiple conversations, where an accusation of inappropriate contact leads to a he-said, she-said investigation, all centered around a misanthropic protagonist Samet. By focusing the entire film on Samet, Ceylan takes the time to understand this difficult, exhausting character in a detached manner, with the camera oftentimes taking in the whole lived-in, rundown places where Samet lives and works in. It’s an interesting perspective, depicting the ways everyone’s fumbling around, trying to create boxes to understand one’s place in the world, but it’s not an easy one to explore. About Dry Grasses dares to do so, anyway.

While the market for animation is mostly dominated by American 3D and Japanese anime, once in a while, a film outside the two industries comes up with an entirely new style of its own, with the design inspired by their respective countries. European animation has garnered some interest with Loving Vincent, but Chicken with Linda! takes it further, taking a more vibrant than impressionistic approach to its art. Somewhat like a neon-colored Fauvist Madeline, the film proceeds with a series of hijinks that wouldn’t be out of place in a children’s storybook, but it charmingly captures the mother-daughter relationship healed through the power of homemade food. It’s sweet and chaotic, much like childhood and the art movement that inspired the film, and it’s undeniably human. Chicken with Linda! is an unexpected delight for both kids and adults.

At the fringes of society, sometimes, all you have is your family. You would do all you can to feed, clothe, and protect them, and your fate hangs in the balance of what they do in return. Abang Adik is centered on two undocumented orphans in Malaysia, and because they only have each other, Abang does all he can legally and within his capabilities as a disabled man to scrounge up some money, but Adik tries to gain more secretly, resorting to scamming fellow illegal immigrants. Writer-director Jin Ong portrays their plight realistically, but more importantly, the drama works because Ong prioritizes crafting the compelling dynamic between them, making it much more heartbreaking when the loss of their one chance changes everything. Abang Adik may not be a perfect drama, but it’s a daring debut that’s needed.

Some films are slow and talky because of mere indulgence, but Close Your Eyes owes its pace to naturalism and poetry. Each frame and dialogue is both beautiful and realistic. If they’re not meditating on the fickleness of life and memory, they’re honoring how cinema can encapsulate them. This is one of those movies you have to experience, not just witness. By the end of it, you’ll be pondering its deceptively simple ideas too, much like the thoughtful Miguel (Manolo Solo) and the elusive Julio (José Coronado).