What are the best European movies in your opinion?

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As the title says. The reason I ask is because I think the majority of people mostly watch american movies, and perhaps some people are not aware that there is a major film industry outside the americas. Anyway.....

My favorites are

Taken 3 (France)
Lockout (France)
The Canal(Ireland)
Crimson Rivers 2 (France)
Skjult (Norway)



  • M 1931 ‘M - Eine Stadt sucht einen Mörder’ Directed by Fritz Lang
  • A Man Escaped 1956 ‘Un condamné à mort s'est échappé’ Directed by Robert Bresson
  • The Battle of Algiers 1966 ‘La battaglia di Algeri’ Directed by Gillo Pontecorvo
  • Le Samouraï 1967 Directed by Jean-Pierre Melville
  • Caliber 9 1972 ‘Milano Calibro 9’ Directed by Fernando Di Leo
  • Das Boot 1981 Directed by Wolfgang Petersen
  • Cinema Paradiso 1988 ‘Nuovo Cinema Paradiso’ Directed by Giuseppe Tornatore
  • La Haine 1995 Directed by Mathieu Kassovitz
  • Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels 1998 Directed by Guy Ritchie
  • Snatch 2000 Directed by Guy Ritchie
  • Downfall 2004 ‘Der Untergang’ Directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel
  • District B13 2004 ‘Banlieue 13’ Directed by Pierre Morel
  • The Lives of Others 2006 ‘Das Leben der Anderen’ Directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
  • The Hunt 2012 ‘Jagten’ Directed by Thomas Vinterberg
  • The Invisible Guest 2016 ‘Contratiempo’ Directed by Oriol Paulo



Movie Forums Squirrel Jumper
The Skin I Live In (2011)
For A Few Dollars More (1965)
Cell 211 (2009)
The Battle of Algiers (1966)

There's a lot more of course but those are my most favorites.



Duh!.. to name a few.

Jagten
Sauna
De grønne slagtere
Elsker dig for evigt
Adams æbler
Jadesoturi
Ondskan
Miekkailija
Armomurhaaja
Festen
Opstandelsen
Kerron sinulle kaiken
Harjunpää & pahan pappi
Afdeling Q - Series



This is a film I enjoy as well... I like Kristopher Joner's acting..

I will list more of his films I have seen

Bølgen
Kongen av Bastøy (it even has Stellan Skarsgård )
Ond tro
Naboer
Villmark


Also a film I forgot the first time around - Himlen Falder

If you love history - Birkebeinerne
Beautiful song from film


Horror film from Switzerland
Sennentuntschi

Horror film from The Netherlands
Zwart water

Finnish film about witch trials in Aaland
Tulen morsian

Film about early Sami people and the social stigma attached to them (Finland)
Sameblod

2 films from Iceland
Reykjavik Whale Watching Massacre
Hrútar


A bit of an extreme film from Denmark
Flænset

Actually pretty much any film with ... to name several!

Mads Mikkelsen
Lars Mikkelsen
Thomas Bo Larsen
Ulrich Thomsen
Nikolaj Lie Kaas
Jakob Oftebro
Tommi Eronen
Ville Virtanen
Peter Franzén
Tommi Korpela
Nikolaj Coster-Waldau



For me it's very difficult to take him seriously because to me he's always Turo, a character from a Finnish sketch show back in the 80's.

If you want to check most of those sketches are on Youtube (just search "aki ja turo"). Sadly no English subs on them so prepare to miss all the fun.
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The reason I ask is because I think the majority of people mostly watch american movies)
Is that really true? Do people watch movies based on what country they are produced in? Or do you mean that they go to the cinema to watch mainly blockbusters - which are mostly made in Hollywood?

I think that's what is good about this forum - the majority of posters here are a bit different to your average joe public moviegoer in that they are open to watching anything that looks good, not just the films that are marketed the most. It's amazing the amount of people who won't watch a film because "it's not in colour" or "it has subtitles" or "it hasn't got anyone I recognise in it"........... I mean what the actual f***?

Anyway, the answers are:

The Lives of Others
Christiane F.
Rififi
Bicycle Thieves
Come and See
Amour
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Wings of Desire
A Prophet
Force Majeure
La Haine
The Broken Circle Breakdown
Ali: Fear eats the Soul
Let the Right One in
Head On
Lilyah-4-eva
Spoorloos
Au Revoir Les Enfants
Angst
Irreversible
Dogtooth
Frantz
Victoria
Ordet
Persona
Eyes Without a Face
Le Havre
Oslo, August 31st

and seeing as the UK is in Europe (for at least the next 3 months phnar), I'll have:

Ratcatcher
The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover
Vertigo
Lawrence of Arabia
Nil by Mouth
Dead man's shoes
Naked
Sexy Beast
Shallow Grave
Kes
Kajaki
Tyrannosaur
Red Road
The Third Man
Don't Look Now

And hundreds more



Is that really true? Do people watch movies based on what country they are produced in? Or do you mean that they go to the cinema to watch mainly blockbusters - which are mostly made in Hollywood?
Actually yes. I enjoy the Scandinavian/Nordic cinema a lot. Even if the film has a specific actor, I will, especially if it got Mads in it. That's why I will watch it. I have places to go to get recommendations.

I have seen :

The Lives of Others
Christiane F.
Wings of Desire
Lilyah-4-eva
Au Revoir Les Enfants
Irreversible
Persona
Eyes Without a Face
The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover



I watch pretty much cinema from everywhere around the world

La Belle et La Bete is a favorite. (Both 1946 and 2014)

A rare find is Bernie - 1996 (from France)



A beautiful film from Hungary is (not so fond of this trailer for it)
Ópium: Egy elmebeteg nö naplója


One of my close friends is from Argentina so Spanish films are not unusual for us to watch..

Tras el cristal
El Lobo - what woman wouldn't like staring at Eduardo Noreiga for a while.
And any Spanish Guillermo del Toro film.

just remembered Klass (Estonia) and Gåten Ragnarok (Norway)



I think what I personally like most about European movies is that they have a tendency to be more down-to-earth and "pessimistic" than hollywood. A little bit more realistic in that sense. The horror movies are very scary too, mostly because they aren't exactly horror, they're more like dark dramas imo. Now I am of course excluding the movies which has an americanized style such as the EuropaCorp films. But that's just my opinion on it



One of the best European films is

Marketa Lazarová
from Czechoslovakia. Its a piece of art.

Portret v sumerkakh is an interesting film. As is Szamanka.

Nekromantik and Nekromantik 2, Cannibal and Lore are to name a few German films.

I have seen a few thousand foreign films. It is hard to go through all of them.



That's a pretty broad question, ignoring UK/Irish releases my top 25 would be something like...

The Wages of Fear
A Man Escaped
Breathless
L'Avventura
Last Year At Marienbad
Ivan's Childhood
8 1/2
Andrei Rublev
Persona
The Battles of Algiers
Marketa Lazarova
Le Samurai
The Comformist
Aguirre: Wrath of God
Stalker
Boy Meets Girl
Kaos
Betty Blue
The Double Life of Veronique
Three Colours: Blue
Werckmeister Harmonies
Dogtooth
Blue is the Warmest Colour
Ida
Two Days, One Night



I doubt whether these two have been mentioned.

1) La Isla Minima. Also known as the Marshlands.This is everything that True Detective's first season thinks it is. Smart, dark and with a great ending.


2)Das letzte Schweigen (2010). Also known as The Silence. Quite an underrated serial killer movie.




Some of my favourites are:

Children of Men
Amélie
The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover
Downfall as others have mentioned
Fanny and Alexander
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Some of these films I don't consider Foreign films.

I see a Foreign film as a film made in a non-English speaking country,directed by a non-English director, with a non-English dialog with less than 10% of English spoken (which is usually broken English) and actors born in that country. If this were not the case, there would be many films with American actors considered to be Foreign films with an English dialog and a few subtitled from other languages.



Cinema Paradiso Tornatore
Camille claudell
Pans labyrinth
Wings of Desire Wenders
Jean de Florette
Manon of the Spring

Bread and Tulips
The Ship Sailed on Fellini
8 1/2 Fellini
La Strada Fellini



I know this thread is old but I want to refresh it because I think that if I made a new thread it would be equivalent to spamming.
I have watched some new European movies which I found interesting and which I can recommend

The Lobster (Greece, Ireland, UK)
The Killing of a Sacred Deer (various)
Anna (France)
The House that Jack Built (various)



Some of my favourite films from europe are,

Angel-A
Downfall
Leaving
Intacto
Autumn Sonata (or any Ingmar Bergman film for that matter)
Troll Hunter
Pans Labyrinth
Dead Snow
The lives of others
The Rec films
Delicatessen
Headhunters
Rendel
Bright days ahead
Blue is the warmest colour
Amour