The Best International Dramas Movies to Watch on Plex

Amidst the chaos that occurred when South Sudan split from the nation, a man is shot dead. To make up for the family’s loss, Northern ex-singer Mona hires his South Sudanese widow as her househelp, a widow unaware of her husband’s true fate, without an actual body. This widow is who Goodbye Julia is named […]

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, […]

When modern systems like law enforcement and forensics fail to come up with definite answers to a murder, loved ones of the victim usually have no recourse, which is the fear at the heart of Irish horror film Oddity. To lose someone you care about, forever, hurts. So when Darcy takes more strange and esoteric […]

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! […]

Like many coming-of-age films about films, it’s easy to assume that Last Film Show would be a derivative of all-time film classic Cinema Paradiso. Both films from opposite corners of the world, separated by more than three decades, do share that awe of cinema from a projection booth. However, unlike Paradiso, the awe of Last […]

Huesera: The Bone Woman might not be the scariest film horror fans would see, but it does strike at the heart of the scary experience of motherhood. Through eerie sounds of breaking bones and weirdly contorted hands at the edge of beds, the film depicts new mother Valeria being haunted by the titular spirit, despite […]

Other People’s Children wrestles with some very tricky life experiences: bonding with a partner’s child in the agonizing knowledge that that attachment is entirely contingent on the fate of your romantic relationship; being a woman of a certain age and wanting a child but becoming keenly aware of the ticking of your body clock. For […]

You’ll probably never find a film like The Blind Man Who Did Not Want to See Titanic. The camera is blurry, with lead Petri Poikolainen’s face the only image we see clearly. The audio sometimes goes in and out. There’s even a section that turns completely dark. While this would usually mean that something is […]

Small Things Like These is the kind of film that doesn’t have a grand resolution, a dramatic climax, or a widespread shift that would change the world forever. What happens might not even change the country, or the town Bill Furlong lives in. But that doesn’t mean the film is unimportant. While Cillian Murphy masterfully […]

Education is a human right, but for many girls around the world, this isn’t necessarily guaranteed– especially if they want to learn past the required years of basic education. Yuni is a coming-of-age drama that depicts a girl in West Java, Indonesia who wants to go to university, but due to the marriage and virginity […]

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 […]

The real life situation behind this harrowing drama is quite extraordinary, so adapting Daniel Rye’s captivity straightforwardly would already intrigue viewers into watching it. However, Held for Ransom does more than depict his torture. Alternating between his captivity and the fundraising efforts back home, the film examines the way they have all responded to the […]

Dramatizing the murder of Hatun “Aynur” Sürücü, A Regular Woman frames her story from her dispassionate narration after she’s passed. This results in a harrowing tale. Knowing her death before she returns home paints every single moment with her family in fury, as they pin every frustration and blame on Aynur for numerous reasons, the […]

Also known as Just 6.5 or Six and a Half per Meters, this police procedural follows the hunt for a drug kingpin named Naser Khakzad. Fast-paced action sets up the investigation off to a thrilling start, and it’s exhilarating to see Samad, the lead cop, get closer and closer to this elusive pusher. However, what […]

In Letterboxd, Cleaners was once the highest rated film of 2021, and was once in the list of the top 250 narrative features overall before the rating system changed in 2023. To viewers outside the Philippines, this might have been mind-boggling, especially since the film wasn’t yet released internationally the year it premiered, but it […]

Given the way this sprawling three-hour theatrical edit echoes the director’s real childhood, it’s easy to say that Fanny and Alexander is an autobiography. In some ways, it is. The dynamic with their stepfather was directly inspired by the director’s own father. In the hands of another director, it would have been easy to demonize […]

In The Beasts, the idyllic semi-retirement that a French couple seeks in the Galician countryside — growing organic vegetables, fixing up abandoned farmhouses — devolves into a terrifying slow-burn nightmare. This beautifully shot yet spiritually ugly thriller plunges us straight into an atmosphere of crackling social tension that never abates. We begin after the event […]

A child’s death is a hard thing to face. The idea of a life cut so short is already painful enough, but when there’s a chance that it’s caused by something that you did, the guilt can be so overwhelming. This is what No Date, No Signature is all about. As coroner Dr. Kaveh Nariman […]

On his first day of class in the remote village of Lunana, the city teacher Ugyen asks his students what they want to be when they grow up. One of the children, a young boy named Sangay, answers that he aspires to be a teacher “because a teacher touches the future.” Lunana: A Yak in […]

When striving towards your life goal, some concessions have to be made in order to get there, e.g. you would forgo some wants in order to fulfill that higher purpose. But how much are you willing to sacrifice? Mario is a sports drama about an aspiring football player that wants to make it higher up […]

Organized crime and drug dealing has been a topic of many a film, sometimes even glamorizing the whole endeavor, but rarely do these depictions acknowledge the weight it can do to a culture, particularly indigenous cultures. Birds of Passage is a film about drug dealers, but it’s a much more distinct take, tackling Colombia’s reputation […]

For Western audiences, City on Fire might be best known as the Hong Kong crime actioner that inspired Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs. The jewelry heist follows the same beats, the on-set stunts embody the same lived-in action, and the films are both very violent. However, there’s a subtle undercurrent that powers the thrill of this […]

Gangsters usually deal in guns and drugs, but occasionally they branch out into other paraphernalia. Bullhead depicts one such gang. Nicknamed by the media as the Hormone Mafia, the crime thriller captures an organized crime network that threatens local cattle farmers to buy their stock of illegal growth hormones. Of course, the setting makes for […]

When it comes to fantasy anime between two races, usually there would be some sort of romance between the leads. But Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms does it differently. Instead, between the humans and the immortal humanoid lorph race that weaves a chronicle of their history is a mother-son relationship, with the human son […]

When depicting a person’s life, most films are chronological. They start from beginning to end, from the character’s birth to their death. However, it’s only fitting for Peppermint Candy to depict the opposite because, mild spoilers: the film starts with a suicide. What would push a person to do such a thing? Director Lee Chang-dong […]

Unlike the scrappy fighters we’ve seen in other sports films, Ichiko Saito of 100 Yen Love is an unmotivated recluse that does only the bare minimum to survive. Hardly an underdog to root for. Still, when Ichiko spots a boxing gym, the film transforms into something special. In spite of the disappointments that follow, the […]

There’s something so delightful about watching Good Morning, the second of Yasujirō Ozu’s films in color. It’s easy to see why– the conflict is relatable, Ozu’s shots are immaculately framed in warm colors, and of course, the pouting children hoping to get a television of their own are just pinch-worthy adorable. But through the neighborhood […]

Underneath all the action of The Yellow Sea is the despair of not getting one’s life in order. To be fair to the taxi driver protagonist, the odds are stacked against him as an ethnic Korean in a Chinese region. However, it doesn’t help that he resorts to gambling has his vice, the vice that […]

After running out of money, travelling tax collector Ning Choi-san might be getting better with his new romance with the graceful Nip Siu-sin. The only problem is, she’s actually a ghost. After all, this tale is called A Chinese Ghost Story. While classified a horror flick only for its supernatural elements, the resulting film takes […]

Given the time period, it’s easy to see The Teacher as a satirical critique of the communist regime. Through the parent-teacher conference in a small high school, director Jan Hřebejk depicts a community shaken by the placement of a new teacher aligned with the Party. The new hire in question is nasty. While outwardly amiable, […]

After finishing his contract with Shochiku, Yasujirō Ozu shifted gears with Floating Weeds, an adaptation of one of his previous black-and-white silent films. There are a few differences. It has sound and color, it’s set after World War II, and Ozu works with a new team, including actual kabuki actor Nakamura Ganjirō II. With these […]

When depicting war and faith, it seems like men are the only ones that have to undertake these challenges, at least it seems, in the stories made available about these topics. But that simply isn’t true. The Innocents is one of the few reminders that, while women might have been kept from the front lines, […]

For better or worse, there is a lot that has been decided about your life even before you were born– the circumstances of your childhood are a direct reflection of the choices your parents made, as well as their parents, and their parents before them. This idea made for an intriguing Portuguese novel, which was […]

Our Children opens at the harrowing end of the true story it’s based on: with the image of a distraught mother (Émilie Dequenne) in a hospital bed, begging a police officer to ensure that her children — who have just predeceased her — are buried in Morocco. From this ominous beginning, the film rewinds into […]

While more people are familiar with its US adaptation, Il Mare is far more striking and emotionally resonant. The Korean romance, separated by timelines, depicts two lonely people who lived in the same seaside residence. They form a bond through the titular house’s mailbox, by sharing letters, voice recorders, and suggestions to deal with loneliness. […]

For all we say about the goodness of forgiveness and redemption, it’s not actually easy to come by. It’s harder when the mistake means jail, the family losing their jobs, and the death of another person. As such, the recently released protagonist of this romantic drama has a lot to do to make up for […]

For viewers who aren’t familiar, the Stations of the Cross is a series of prayers that contemplates Jesus’ crucifixion. It’s also the title and the basis of this German coming-of-age drama. It can seem controversial to create such a work, given how extreme Maria gets in proving her devotion. But given the raw, naturalistic approach […]