100 Best Foreign Movies on Kanopy Right Now

What happens to genius and complex filmmakers once they reach old age? Agnès Varda at 89 is one example. She maintains an interest in the same deep questions but portrays them in a casual way – basically tries to have a little more fun with things. She finds a friend in JR, a young artist with a truck that prints large portraits. Together they go around French villages (the French title is “Visages Villages”), connecting with locals and printing their photos on murals. Their interactions are researched, but not worked. In fact, they are deeply improvised. Because of this and because the movie is structured in an episode format, it will completely disarm you. And when you least expect it you will be met with long-lasting takes on mortality, loss, but also gender, the environment and the evasiveness of life and art.

Hotel Salvation is a touching movie about a father asking his son for a last wish : let him die in the Holy city of Varanasi. This Indian drama will let you discover a modern Hindu philosophy, the power of the scenic Varanasi and the bonds of family. It faces the question of death in the light, gentle and humorous way that perfectly illustrates the contradiction in question: celebrating life while surrounded by death.

A beautiful, poetic and disturbing ode to the waters of the Chilean archipelago from the perspective of the stars and planets, its Indigenous inhabitants, and the bodies of those who were disappeared into it under the Pinochet regime. As Patricio Guzman tells us and shows us, water has a memory and a voice. The opening sequence is like Salgado’s “Genesis” photos but in colour and moving on the screen, absolutely breathtaking.

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.

Stories of forbidden love are captivating, because in the face of a lover, in the face of one’s opposite, one cannot help but be challenged, hopefully for the better. This is not what happened here. Out in the Dark is a film debut that takes this idea in the Middle East, with two gay lovers coming from Palestine and Israel. It’s an intriguing idea, and had it been more nuanced, Israeli director Michael Mayer would have created a daring first feature, but the film clearly comes from a limited Israeli perspective, with no Palestinians casted or working behind the scenes. While the film may be sympathetic to hypothetical LGBTQ+ people in Palestine, Out in the Dark doesn’t have the guts to question why they’ve been persecuted in the first place.

A beautiful and touching story about staying true to your inner morals and humanity in the middle of a raging war. Set during the conflict between Abkhazia and Georgia, Ivo (Lembit Ulfsak), an old Estonian farmer, takes in two wounded soldiers from opposite sides, who agree to not kill each other as long as they stay under Ivo’s roof. It’s not “Saving Private Ryan” heroic nor “Pianist” heartbreaking. Tangerines is instead a powerful movie in its simplicity, as the story evolves around 4 men and a crop of tangerines. Yet for some reason, it still tells the story of every war, and the people in it.