International recommendation thread

[jurinova]

I complained in another thread about how most popular media is from the US and it got me thinking... How about a thread for recommending media from all around the world! You don't have to recommend from your own country but from wherever you like! Let's also maybe try keeping UK media low too, because they also have quite a big piece of the popular media pie already.

Feel free to recommend books, tv series, comics or whatever! Let's just make this a thread for celebrating the great stories there are in this world that don't get the spotlight they deserve!

Here's some movie recommendations from me! (I put in the English name too, so they'll be easier to find.)

Lola rennt, Germany, 1998 (Run Lola Run!)
A movie about a woman trying to come up with a huge amount of money in 20 minutes. It's a very intense movie and concentrates heavily on characters and their interractions. I really enjoyed the storytelling methods it had!

Mies vailla menneisyyttä, Finland, 2002 (The Man Without A Past)
A man suffers a sudden amnesia and tries to live his life not knowing anything about himself. It's a comedic drama and a movie I love very much. For some people it can be a difficult movie to approach because it's quite undramatic in its storytelling but the writing is excellent and worth giving it a shot.

Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari, Germany, 1920 (The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari)
An oldie but a goldie. Horror story about mysterious murders happening, just as a strange man predicted. Interesting story in itself but also worth a watch for its avant garde settings and the influence it has had in movie history.

Låt den rätte komma in, Sweden, 2008 (Let the Right One in)
A story about a bullied boy who befriends a vampire. A really stunning and unique vampire story. I really, really recommend watching this and staying away from the American remake.

[Maps]

Ohhh I like this! I haven’t read many foreign books that I’m aware of, but I’ve watched plenty of shows. I love how different plots can be across the world from your typical American plots. Ima keep my eye on this thread for good reads

[Strontium]

The Engelsfors Trillogy, Sweden, 2011: a YA Urban Fantasy set in Sweden where being a protagonist will not save you. Six girls become witches and discover that their town of Englesfors is not as sleepy as they thought. There's magic, prophecy, animal friends and lesbians! The whole series is published in English, and there is also a movie of the first book, although it never came to the US.

Russian Ark, Russia, 2001: A movie most famous for being shot entirely in one take, I find it to be a magical experience, one that has inspired my own work. A nameless, faceless protagonist goes on a casual time-traveling adventure through the famous Winter Palace of St. Petersburg, accompanied by a grumpy foreigner.

The Interrogation of Ashala Wolf, Australia, 2013?: the first book in a YA trilogy, it takes Aboriginal Australian mythos and mixes it with a dystopian setting. Ashala Wolf is the leader of the Tribe, a group of kids with powers who have escaped persecution and live among the forest. So how did she get captured by the sworn enemy of all empowered kids? Oh, and there are dinosaurs too.

That's all I can think of off the top of my head. I really like reading books from around the world!

[silverraven0]

The rainbow troops by Andrea Hirata.

The story is about a group of kids from an island on Indonesia, struggling to keep on studying on a rundown school, building their friendship starting from there, and knowing their lives on the island, family and poverty. You'll be seeing the history of the writer and his childhood on the book, and it's absolutely beautiful and amazing.

(sorry, I'm just bad at explaining lol)

This is one of the best books I've ever read and he is one of the writer i truly respected. This is the first book of a tetralogy (and there's some other companion book), and have been translated to 40 something languages, I believe? Sorry, I forgot. XD

[elyss]

Yoko Ogawa's Diving Pool is a series of short stories that seem normal but puts a sinister vibe in the back of your head as you read it.

[SleepingPoppy]

Nothing new to add, but I will second the recommendation of Let the Right One In. The remake is okay, but I far prefer the original. It's also supposed to be a pretty good book, so those who like novels might consider checking that out.

[DiegoPalacios]

I recommend this:

"31 minutos" is a Chilean TV series, which parodies news shows' formats, and is hosted by puppets.

Is beyond hillarious. Unfortunately, i think it`s only available in spanish.

[AllynCrowe]

There is a netflix series called 'Undercover' which is dutch and belgian. It's a pretty cool crime series about XTC that gets a lot more human than other series would

[jpnakashima]

That's a cool thread! What I like the most about media from around the world is how different they treat similar stories and themes, filtered through their unique culture and way of life. Nice stuff.

I'll start with what I feel is cheating a little, since Japanese media is arguably the most dominant after US one, but two movies I'm really fond of are:

Hausu (1977)
This is one of my favorite movies ever. It's just really hard to explain. It's a movie about a girl named Gorgeous and her friends trapped inside a haunted house. That's kind of the plot. That's not the movie, though. It's crazy, unique, fun as hell and absolutely unhinged cinema. Nothing quite like it.

Audition (1999)
I feel like this was pretty well known in the day. A movie about a middle-aged salaryman whose wife died years ago and now he wants to find a new partner. To avoid all the work, he and his friend organize an audition for a radio program that doubles as a way for the salaryman to find a girl he likes without having to do the trouble to get to know her. He meets Asami and they start a love story together... until things go horribly wrong. It's a misleading movie. It has the baggage of having a really emblematic climax, a whole reputation, but the movie is much more interesting than only its most famous scenes. Greeeat movie.

Suicide Club (2002)
54 teenage girls commit mass suicide by jumping in front of a train. From there, a weird mystery about a supposed Suicide Club, whose members (all teenagers) keep organizing and commiting acts of mass suicide start to unfold. It's weird. It's funny and dark. But mostly weird.

Three offbeat and weirdly touching movies to me.

In music, I really love this Brazilian band called Carne Doce. Their last album is pretty neat.

In comics, El Eternauta is a masterpiece.

Seriously, one of the greatest comics I've ever seen. It's Will Eisner levels of masterpiece.

[jpnakashima]

@jurinova Run Lola Run! and Caligari!! Great movies!! I'm really fond of Lola, right up my alley.

@DiegoPalacios Dude!! 31 Minutos!!
I used to watch it on Brazilian Nickelodeon, so there is at least a Brazilian version of it! It's a great show!! So many memories...

[DokiDokiTsuna]

OOOOOOHH YESSSSS

Where has this thread been all my life? ^^ 5 years of French education have given me a ton of international media to love~. A few highlights:

-Two operas: Carmen by the Metropolitan Opera in 2010, and the Notre Dame de Paris production from 1998 at the Palais de Congres...I love them both; I'm gonna buy them on DVD one of these days...

-Some movies: Cyrano de Bergerac (1990) starring Gerard Depardieu (such a GREAT production!), Les Intouchables (they recently made an American/English version of it, but I don't remember what they called it), L'Herrisson (a cute, kid-friendly movie~), and Ernest et Celestine, which is another kids' movie (that happens to have an English dub, but I prefer the French voices). The animation is lovely and the story is so cute~

[jurinova]

So many interesting recommendations already, yay!

Two operas: Carmen by the Metropolitan Opera in 2010, and the Notre Dame de Paris production from 1998 at the Palais de Congres...I love them both; I'm gonna buy them on DVD one of these days...

I don't know about an opera but some years ago I fell in love with a Notre Dame de Paris musical! I love the book too, and I think it's a shame it doesn't seem to be as popular as Les Miserables.

Here's a few more recommendations from me!

Kung Fu Hustle, Hong Kong, 2004
An absolutely fantastic action comedy movie. Really great writing, sets and action!

Please Like Me, Australia, 2013-2016
A tv series following the life of a young gay man dealing with his life and his mentally ill mother. Drama comedy that made me laugh and then hit me in the gut with feels.

[OttoGruenwald]

I recommend everything by the Argentinean Jorge Luis Borges. The man was one of the greatest fantasists of all time and most of his work is translated--even his college lecture series on fiction writing which is also excellent.

I recommend starting with Book of Imaginary Beings. It's got a great selection of fiction creatures from mythological monsters to creations by Edgar Alan Poe and CS Lewis.

[DokiDokiTsuna]

I don't know about an opera but some years ago I fell in love with a Notre Dame de Paris musical!

That is actually exactly what I meant (I probably got confused in all the excitement ^^; ). I actually had one opera and two musicals, the other one being Le Petit Prince. I don't like its production quite as much as I like that of Notre Dame de Paris, but the music composer is the same and I have a playlist of all the songs.

I recommend everything by the Argentinean Jorge Luis Borges. The man was one of the greatest fantasists of all time and most of his work is translated--even his college lecture series on fiction writing which is also excellent.

GASP I love Borges!! I read his works in English though, since I can't read Spanish. He's a huge inspiration to me; I named one of my comic characters after one of his short story characters. ^^ One of these days I've just got to read The Circular Ruins again...

[OttoGruenwald]

He's an inspiration to my writing as well. The man was an ace writer.

[DokiDokiTsuna]

I've remembered more things...I'm probably just gonna keep on remembering more things:

-Un Monstre a Paris: One of my favorite animated movies of all time...I have the French versions of the songs, but I've only seen it in English, unfortunately (the dub is good, though). One of these days...

-Lou! I used to come across the translated comics in the library all the time when I was a kid...and last summer I watched the whole series on YouTube. It's not exactly unforgettable, but it's cute and unique, and the main character is so...lovable~.

[beta1042]

I love Amelie, such a fun movie!

[jpnakashima]

@OttoGruenwald Borges is soooooo damn good!! I've been obsessing a little bit about the ''map-territory relation'' concept lately, so I was reminded lately about this amazing one paragraph story he did, ''On Exactitude In Science''.

''…In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a
single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entirety
of a Province. In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the
Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and
which coincided point for point with it. The following Generations, who were not so
fond of the Study of Cartography as their Forebears had been, saw that that vast Map
was Useless, and not without some Pitilessness was it, that they delivered it up to the
Inclemencies of Sun and Winters. In the Deserts of the West, still today, there are
Tattered Ruins of that Map, inhabited by Animals and Beggars; in all the Land there is
no other Relic of the Disciplines of Geography.''
—Suarez Miranda,Viajes devarones prudentes, Libro IV,Cap. XLV, Lerida, 1658

So great.

@beta1042 Amelie is just too much fun!! It's so wholesome, I love it...

I was watching some neorealist movies too. Italian cinema is the shit.
Anything by Roberto Rosselini hits that sweet spot. Two movies of his I'd recommend are
Paisa (1946), an episodic bilingual movie (Italian and English) set in World War II about, among many things, barriers in communication.
Stromboli, Terra Di Dio (1950), starring freaking Ingrid Bergman, about a foreigner woman in times of war that marries an Italian fisherman so she won't be sent to an internment camp. She and her husband go live in his hometown in a remote boring island called Stromboli, where she just won't fit in. This movie's climax is amazing, by the way.

I also looooooove Federico Fellini and I have been rewatching Nights of Cabiria (Le Notti Di Cabiria) (1957) a lot recently. It's another episodic film, now about the life of a prostitute named Cabiria and her struggle to just make the best out of what she has. I'll just link the last scene in the movie because it is, to me, one of the best final scenes I've ever seen. I first watched the movie after I saw this scene in a movie class of mine in college and cried even without any context. It's one of the reasons I keep coming back to this movie. One of my favorites.