Obscure Foreign Films - what are your favorites?

That Obscure Object of Desire was a lot of fun. I'm a fan of L'Enfance Nu from the 60s. Actors were mixed in with "real life" people. Sometimes the plot was fictional; othertimes the "real" people told about their lives and true stories. One of those people told of an episode during his days in the French Resistance that was very chilling.

With A Friend Like Harry. France, 2000. Original title: Harry, un ami qui vous veut du bien.

It's a thriller and a character study. Well-acted, darkly comic at times and just plain dark most of the time. Highly entertaining.

You mean, Harry, He’s Here To Help.

I love The Spirit Of The Beehive, OP.

I’ll add Paris Nous Appartient.

I wouldn't categorize any of the films released by Criterion as obscure. Most of the gay films I've watched recently are all international releases that got little to no press in the USA. Knife and Heart was the last one I watched. Weak on story but beautiful visuals and some gorgeous French/Arab men showing lots of skin.

Not terribly obscure, but Haneke’s “The White Ribbon”.

*shiver*

The White Ribbon--very chilling.

Just today I thought of the movie 'Volver' and how much I liked it!

Time Stands Still

Beautiful 4-hour documentary about Amsterdam, from 1996. "Amsterdam Global Village".

Daughters of Darkness. A great vampire film with Delphine Seyrig showing the world what a star she is.

Les Diaboliques

Like Water for Chocolate or anything with a young Marco Leonardi.

David’s Birthday - the sexiest gay film ever made.

La Grande Bouffe - if Leaving Las Vegas was a screwball French big cast comedy about overindulgence in everything.

What classifies a film as obscure, for the purpose of this thread?

R16 any foreign film, besides something like Slum Dog Millionaire.

The White Ribbon

It’s subtly haunting and makes you really question life & religion.

I’m just going to assume that anything that isn’t as well-known as La Dolce Vita or The Seventh Seal counts as obscure, so here are a few I really enjoyed. They all earned Oscar nominations or wins so they’re not unknown, but watch them anyway if you haven’t:

Mephisto

The Garden of the Finzi-Continis

Umberto D.

Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion

Au Revoir, Les Enfants

Delicatessen. Maybe not the most obscure but certainly niche.

Nights of Cabiria, Fellini 1957

R12 are you posting from a public library's Classic Movie Night for Teens, in a Flyovertan small town? Where else for whom else is Les Diaboliques obscure?

El Sur

L'Avventura

L'Eclisse

Blow Up

Red Dessert

Pitfall

Yi YI

I'm nominating the obscure forgotten gem La Règle du Jeu. Oh I think it was made like a 150 years ago and it's French and by some guy named Renoir whose uncle was a famous writer or something.

Raise the Red Lantern

Ran/Seven Samurai/Roshomon, etc

The Last Wave

The Vanishing (the original, obvs)

The Return of Martin Guerre

My Brilliant Career

And so many more... these are not obscure but they are the first ones that came to mind.

I nominate the 1932 Scarface.. It's not obscure, or foreign, but I like it.

It's official. This thread is useless as nobody will stick to the obscure criteria. Nobody.

R26, you couldn’t even stick to the basic criterion of foreign.

R27 are you a SNARK FREE ZONE?

My favorite Obscure Foreign Film is The Whopper from Burger King.

Well when you're talking about "obscure" foreign films with a largely American group, that means most of them.

Night of the Shooting Stars (Italy, 1982). I urge this film on everyone looking for something to watch. Stark, beautiful, and thrilling.

The Whoopi Goldberg classic ‘Eddie’.

Many Italian Giallos not directed by Dario Argento. He sort of became synonymous with the genre but there were several good ones.

French Film- I've Loved You So Long.

Beautiful film.

Speaking of giallos, Cat o' Nine Tails and The Girl Who Knew Too Much.

Yes, I'm a bump bitch. Get over it.

Four Flies on Grey Velvet. Amazing visual style by Argento.

A trilogy from Lukas Moodysson - Show Me Love, Together and Lilja 4-ever. Perfect films - touching, hilarious, devastating.

An Argentine film by Marco Berger -- The Blond One (Un Rubio)

Well, Come On, Smile (1985)

When I Am Dead and Gone (1967)

Ditte, Child of Man (1946)

Hour of the Star (1985)

The Night of Counting the Years (1969)

People of the Mountains (1942)

Keep Smiling (2012)

Night Train (1959)

Bewitched Love (1967)

Days and Hours (2004)

Rosaura at 10 O'Clock (1958)

The Hour of the Star is so good--thanks for the reminder.

In The Mood for Love (Hong Kong, 2000)

Fine Dead Girls, a great lezzie thriller from Croatia.

R41 That's supposed to be obscure?! It was voted the second best film of the 21st century by the BBC recently! Some of you obviously don't know the meaning of the word obscure or just don't know any actually obscure films.

The Sound of Music is a wonderful Austrian movie, with singing and dancing and a thrilling subplot about sewing. For a WWII movie the colors are amazing, I guess the Nazis were good at film technology and also dubbing.

I'm not sure what constitutes "obscure."

Bava's Operazione paura

Fellini's Le tentazioni del Dottor Antonio

Fassbinder's World on a Wire

the Argentine/American gay film Nobody's Watching

The dark Guatemalan gay film Temblores

Zhang Yimou's Shadow - which is so convoluted, I was still confused after having gone to see it 2X - is one of the most beautifully shot stylized movies I've ever seen in a theater

White Ribbon had several Oscar noms. Not obscure.

Betty Blue

Subway

Kore-eda Hirokazu's haunting masterpiece, "After Life."

Some AMAZING suggestions here!

I love the Japanese new wave.

Pigs and Battleships

The Face of Another

Onibaba

All are stark, thrilling, unsettling but rendered with otherworldly beauty and passion.

Also

Padre Pedrone by the Taviani Brothers

Don’t Torture A Duckling (giallo with the beautiful Marc Porel)

Les Dames du Bois de Bologne (early Bresson)

Scum with a hot young beefy Ray Winstone

I could go on and on...

Amélie

Les Enfants Terribles from Jean Cocteau. Mesmerizing.

I Will Walk Like a Crazy Horse

"Alice" by surrealist Czech filmmaker Jan Svankmajer

Here's a nice and relatively unknown gem from Brazil I just watched: it's very slow-moving, contemplative but also unpretentious. My only complaint is that it goes on for about two minutes too long (didn't like the last scene very much).

Japan: Shoplifters; The Third Murder

Russia: 12; Mongol

Spain: Cannibal; Grupo 7; Autor; Eye for an Eye (Quien a Hierro Mata); Sleep Tight (Mientras duermes)

Argentina: El Mismo Amor, La Misma Lluvia; XXY; El secreto de sus ojos

Italy: Perfect Strangers; Non Ti Muovere; La Pazza Gioia

Denmark: Long Story Short; Stealing Rembrandt

Turkey: Mustang; Losers' Club

China: Going Home; Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress

France: Tournée

FYR: When Father Was Away on Business; Black Cat, White Cat

There's a French film from the 80s wherein the husband, a pilot, takes his unfaithful wife up without a seatbelt in his small plane and then flips the plane over, dumping said wife out. I've been trying to find the name of it for years--I'll bet someone on DL knows it.

R42, I assumed that "obscure" meant "obscure to general movie audiences", not "obscure to film fanatics."

By that definition, pretty much any foreign-language film is obscure. Besides, what harm is there in reminding readers of a very good 20-year-old foreign movie they may have forgotten about but would enjoy watching again, or perhaps seeing for the first time?

Okay, by "obscure" I meant a foreign film not broadly popular, touted, winner of Oscars, etc.

But what is obscure to one viewer is probably popular to another. And time, yes, makes obscure some great films that were well-known in their day.

I've loved getting all these suggestions. Thanks!

R50, the director of Les Infants Terrible, Jean-Pierre Melville, has become my new obsession. He was a master of existential noir, featuring brooding silences, fabulous art direction and beautiful men. Le Samourai, starring Alain Delon, might be his most famous film. My favorite, though, is Le Cercle Rouge, a heist film starring Delon and Gian-Maria Volanté. It has some very elegant killings, and a low-key sexual/romantic vibe between Delon and Volanté.

I love "Antonia's Line"

Not obscure, but as we approach the holiday season, especially this year, I'm excited to watch the full version of Fanny and Alexander again. I've introduced it to several friends who don't necessarily like serious movies but have nevertheless made it a Christmas tradition to watch it. Totally magical.

To Forget Venice (1979) -- brother and sister, both gay, meet at their dying aunt's home, with their partners, and dysfunction, grief, poignancy ensue... Italian but Swedish Bergman star Erland Josephson stars in it.

Superboys

R61 That's a great film. You made it sound very gloomy but if I remember correctly there were also some pretty funny moments in it.

Addendum to R54

India: The Lunchbox; Photograph; Te3n (Teen)

France: Gadjo Dilo

R60 uncanny, my friends and I have made The Seventh Seal our annual holiday get together movie!

It's been years since I've seen it R63 - you've made me want to revisit it. I remember them having a picnic, with drinking and partying going on - and a flashback scene where one of them is a child again and breaks a vase or something? Anyway, don't remember much humor - except the dying aunt, who was an opera star, has some amusing anecdotes or maybe her outlook on dying is bittersweet?

Oh and Ebert didn't like it - but I think he missed the point (I often disagreed with him back in the ancient Siskel & Ebert days). I think it's a "mood piece" and he thought it should have more of a linear plot.

One amusing scene I remember very well is where one of the characters supposedly swallows a bunch of pills and commits suicide in front of a traumatized small girl but then bubbles start flying out of her mouth because she was only joking and swallowed a bar of soap instead. I love black comedy moments like that one.

I just saw a fascinating Soviet/Russian film “My Friend Ivan Lapshin/мой друг Иван Лапшин” (1985) about life in a provincial town in 1937 during Stalin’s purges. Might sound unremittingly grim but one reviewer called it Bruegel-esque and that seems apt. It’s on YouTube with subtitles.

[quote]There's a French film from the 80s wherein the husband, a pilot, takes his unfaithful wife up without a seatbelt in his small plane and then flips the plane over, dumping said wife out. I've been trying to find the name of it for years--I'll bet someone on DL knows it.

R55 I think this is Patrice Leconte's comedy "Tango" (1993).

India - Mother India , Pyaasa

Leviathan (2014) Russian--one of those films that makes you feel the director has a bead on the zeitgeist.

The orphanage , Spain. A beautiful and heartbreaking Del Toro film.

Blue Room, France. An old school Hitchcock esque mystery thriller.

Phoenix, Germany. Another Hitchcock type thriller starring Nina Hoss and Ronald Zehrfeld.

Yella, Germany. Haunting film.

Cache, France. Disturbing mystery thriller.

The Joke (1969), based on Milan Kundera's novel. Both film and novel are great. Beautifully photographed in b&w.

Some really good choices here! I love when you have finally been able to track down and watch and obscure film you wanted to watch for a long time.

This black and white film was broadcast over 30 years ago, and I've been searching for its title. The plot portrayed a British(?) seaman returning to his small village with his young African bride and her life with her in-laws and neighbors when he returns to sea.

I would love to see this lovely movie again and share it with others. Please help.

R76 That may be "The Sailor's Return" (1978). There's a more detailed description at the link. It was filmed in color, but maybe you saw it on a b/w TV?

"Former sea captain William Targett returns to his native Dorset village. He brings with him his black wife, Tulip, a princess from Dahomey, Africa. Bigotry and ignorance among the villagers leads to tragedy."

R77: Thank you, thank you, thank you!! Yes, "The Sailor's Return."

You are my hero!

It is bizarre how few actual obscure films there are here.

My definition would be films not available in conventional streaming or DVD/Blu-Ray.

I would list:

Time Stands Still Hungarian teens in the 1950s, American Rock, political instability

A Man LIke Eva Eva Mattes plays Fassbinder

Celeste A biography of Proust's housekeeper in the style of Proust

Macunaima A Latin satire/folktale/magic realism. Sort of defies description

Someone listed Švankmajer's Alice, but that is fairly well known. I would list his other films like Faust. They are genuinely obscure in the English speaking world.

French comedy Happy Home (La Maison Du Bonheur). It’s one of my favorite comedies, delightful! Sort of a French version of Money Pit.

The Hunt 2012

Agree about "Celeste". Such an interesting story and touching film. The memoir it's based on is also good: Monsieur Proust by Céleste Albaret,

Trump's pee pee tapes with Russian hookers.

Does Quebec count as foreign? I only saw this movie once on late-night Canadian television but I've never forgotten it.

Had forgotten about this one--it should be the DL mascot movie!

C.R.A.Z.Y. (2005), Jean-Marc Vallée's amazing coming-out film, a huge hit in Canada when first released but barely known in the U.S. A must-see for all the gays. Not your standard coming-out story.