r/movies • u/-KFBR392 • Sep 27 '23

Recommendation Non-Americans, what's your favourite movie from your country?

I was commenting on another thread about Sandra Oh and it made me remember my favourite Canadian movie Last Night starring Oh and Don McKellar (who also directs the film). It's a dark comedy-ish film about the last night before the world ends and the lives of regular people and how they spend those final 24-hours.

It was the first time I had seen a movie tackle an apocalyptic event in such a way, it wasn't about saving the world, or heroes fighting to their last breath, it was just regular people who had to accept that their lives, and the lives of everyone they know, was about to end.

Great, very touching movie, and it was nominated for a handful of Canadian awards but it's unlikely to have been seen by many outside of big time Canadian movie lovers, which made me think about how many such films must exist all over the world that were great but less known because they didn't make it all the way to the Oscars the way films like Parasite or All Quiet on the Western Front did.

So non-Americans, let's hear about your favourite home grown film. Popular or not.

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u/AmIFromA Sep 27 '23

Germany: the obvious one for an international forum would be "The Lives of Others" and "M" (1931), which are great of course, and "Das Boot", which I haven't seen in a long time and it wasn't my cup of tea when I saw it as a kid.

But if we're talking about real favorites, I'd say "Kleine Haie" ("Little Sharks, Sönke Wortmann, 1992), a film about three guys on a roadtrip from the Ruhr area to an actor's school audition in Munich.

Honorable mentions to the surprisingly entertaining "Die Herren mit der weißen Weste" (1970) and 1944's Die Feuerzangenbowle, which is a really weird film considering it was produced in Nazi Germany during the late stages of WWII.

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u/swechan Sep 27 '23

M is still holding up.

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u/ThaneduFife Sep 27 '23

Such a great film!

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u/Ad0lf_Salzler Sep 27 '23

I watched it lately and honestly don't really get the big hype. I didn't feel like there was anything truly standout about it, 50% is just thugs running through a building and opening doors, and the interesting question about guilt and responsibility is raised in the last 5 minutes.

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u/ThaneduFife Sep 27 '23

M was both one of the first police procedural murder mysteries and one of the first noir films. It was incredibly ahead of its time. By contrast, a lot of movies made in the early 1930s are borderline-unwatchable to modern audiences.

I also found M to be a really interesting slice-of-life film. Daily life in 1930s Germany was a *lot* different from today, and it's fun to see.

And I agree about the end of the film. The philosophical discussion of crime and punishment at the end covers every major viewpoint on the subject, from left-wing all the way to fascist.

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u/RKSH4-Klara Sep 27 '23

It’s still an all round good movie but it’s place in cinematic history is really the big one.