Foreign-Language Films Worth the Subtitles
If you avoid subtitles, these are the films to change your mind. They're the best non-English films of the last few years plus a handful of classics, picked because they're gripping, funny or moving enough that you stop noticing you're reading within ten minutes.
The easiest way in is genre. Parasite, RRR, Godzilla Minus One and Train to Busan are crowd-pleasers that happen to be in another language, and nobody needs persuading once they've started. The Worst Person in the World, Perfect Days and Fallen Leaves are quieter, character-driven films that reward a room that's paying attention. And if someone is truly subtitle-shy, Run Lola Run has so little dialogue they'll barely read at all.
Where you can, choose subtitles over the dubbed track: dubs flatten the performances, and these were made to be heard in the original. A few are long, with RRR running about three hours, and Pan's Labyrinth and All Quiet on the Western Front are graphically violent. For animation in other languages, see Animated Movies for Grown-Ups; for more recent films in any language, Best Movies of the 2020s.
Parasite
Movie · 2019In Korean. The best argument there is for subtitles, and the first non-English film to win Best Picture. A poor family talks its way into jobs with a rich one, and what starts as a comic caper turns into something much darker. Go in knowing as little as possible.
Another Round
Movie · 2020In Danish. Four bored teachers test a theory that people work better slightly drunk, and for a while it works. Funny, then sad, then joyful, and Mads Mikkelsen's dance near the end is a scene people rewatch on its own. Won the Oscar for international feature.
RRR
Movie · 2022In Telugu. Three hours of the most gloriously excessive action filmmaking of the decade: two revolutionaries in 1920s India, a great bromance, a truck full of wild animals and a dance-off whose song won an Oscar. Violent, and completely sincere about all of it.
Godzilla Minus One
Movie · 2023In Japanese. Set in a Japan still in ruins after the war, it's as much about a guilt-ridden former kamikaze pilot as about the monster, and it won the Oscar for visual effects on a famously small budget. The best Godzilla film since the 1954 original.
Sentimental Value
Movie · 2025In Norwegian, with some English. A once-celebrated director asks the daughter he neglected to star in his comeback film, set in their family home, and when she refuses he casts a Hollywood star instead. Funny, aching and generous to everyone in it. It won the Oscar for international feature.
Anatomy of a Fall
Movie · 2023In French and English, and the mix matters: the couple at its center argue in English, a language neither of them grew up speaking. A man falls to his death outside their mountain chalet, his wife is charged, and the trial picks their marriage apart. Long, gripping and ambiguous on purpose.
The Worst Person in the World
Movie · 2021In Norwegian. Julie, nearly thirty, keeps changing careers and boyfriends, and the film follows her in chapters over a few years. It plays as a romantic comedy before turning serious late on, and Renate Reinsve is wonderful. The most relatable pick here if you're in your twenties or thirties.
Perfect Days
Movie · 2023In Japanese. A man who cleans public toilets in Tokyo repeats the same routine every day: cassettes in the van, a paperback at night, photos of trees at lunch. Almost nothing happens, and it's one of the most peaceful films you'll ever see. Kōji Yakusho is extraordinary.
I'm Still Here (2024)
Movie · 2024In Portuguese. In 1971 Rio de Janeiro, the military dictatorship takes away a former congressman, and his wife spends years fighting to learn what happened while raising their five children. Fernanda Torres is superb, and the restraint makes it hit harder. Brazil's first Oscar for international feature.
Fallen Leaves
Movie · 2023In Finnish. Two lonely Helsinki workers meet at a karaoke bar and keep losing each other to lost phone numbers and bad luck. Aki Kaurismäki's deadpan romance is short, sweet and very funny in its straight-faced way. A good first subtitled film for anyone who likes Wes Anderson.
It Was Just an Accident
Movie · 2025In Persian. A former political prisoner thinks he recognizes the man who tortured him by the squeak of his artificial leg, but he was blindfolded, so he needs other ex-prisoners to be sure. Tense and darkly funny, shot secretly in Iran by Jafar Panahi, and the winner of the Palme d'Or.
Portrait of a Lady on Fire
Movie · 2019In French. On the coast of 18th-century Brittany, a painter is hired to secretly paint a woman who refuses to sit for her marriage portrait. A slow-burning love story told in glances, with one of the great final scenes. There's nudity, a sex scene and a frank abortion scene.
Roma (2018)
Movie · 2018In Spanish and Mixtec. Alfonso Cuarón's memory of the domestic worker who helped raise him in 1970s Mexico City, shot in luminous black-and-white. Slow and observational for an hour, then overwhelming. Watch it on the biggest screen and best speakers you can find.
All Quiet on the Western Front (2022)
Movie · 2022In German. The new adaptation of the great anti-war novel follows a teenager who enlists in 1917 expecting glory. It is relentlessly brutal, with graphic battle violence from start to finish, and won the Oscar for international feature. Punishing, and meant to be.
Train to Busan
Movie · 2016In Korean. Proof that subtitles don't slow down action: zombies on a speeding train, and you'll be reading without noticing. It's the horror pick for people who don't watch horror, built around a distracted father trying to get his daughter to her mother in Busan.
Run Lola Run
Movie · 1998In German, though you'll barely read: it's mostly running, techno and a handful of shouted lines. Eighty minutes, three attempts at the same twenty-minute race to save a boyfriend, each changed by tiny details. The answer for anyone convinced subtitled films are slow.
Pan's Labyrinth
Movie · 2006In Spanish. A fairy tale and a war film braided together in 1944 Spain, where a girl escapes her brutal stepfather into a world of fauns and monsters. Not for children despite the creatures: the violence is graphic and sudden. Guillermo del Toro's best film.
Amélie
Movie · 2001In French. A shy Paris waitress decides to secretly improve the lives of the people around her, and the whole film is saturated color and whimsy. Sweeter than anything else on this page, though its comic sex scenes include brief nudity. Almost everyone who sees it wants to visit Montmartre.
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Movie · 2000In Mandarin. Ang Lee's martial-arts romance, with fighters running across rooftops and dueling at the tops of bamboo trees. It made a generation of Americans comfortable with subtitles, and its quiet, restrained love stories are as strong as its fights.
Cinema Paradiso
Movie · 1988In Italian. A filmmaker returns to his Sicilian village and remembers the projectionist who became a second father to him. Nostalgic and openly sentimental, with a final scene built from old film clips that has made audiences cry for decades. Start with the shorter theatrical cut.
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Picks are editorial recommendations. Streaming availability changes by region and over time — the “where to stream” links check current availability on JustWatch.