I have been finding some excellent foreign films on Netflix, often enjoying them more than those made in this country.
1. Dunkirk. 2017. US, UK, France, Netherlands. Gritty. Another historical drama. Little dialogue. It's more as if you are part of the scene, present at the time as German troops force the allies onto the beaches at Dunkirk where they are being strafed as the big ships there to take them home are being sunk. No Americans are present since the U.S. hasn't yet entered the war.
2. From the Land of the Moon. 2016. France. A passionate French woman (Marion Cotillard) must decide between her husband who fought in Spain and a young man wounded in France's Indochina war. Beautiful settings. An interesting, complex story line.
3. Goodbye, Christopher Robin. 2017. UK. Bio drama about A. A. Milne, creator of Winnie the Pooh. It concentrates on the family's troubles following WWI all the way up to WWII.
4. Lemon Tree. 2008. Israel. Based on a true story of an Israeli Defense Minister whose department orders the lemon grove next door to be cut down so that it might not harbor terrorists. Since the orchard is her livelihood and harbors no terrorists, the owner, a Palestinian widow, takes the case to the Israeli supreme court. Poignant.
5. The Fencer. 2015. Estonia and Finland. Set in the late '40s and early '50s, this is the story of a man who takes a teaching position in a small Estonian village school to hide from the KGB. He is a fencing champion and starts a sporting club of students who become good enough to go on to a tournament, but by taking them there, he then exposes his identity. A true story.
6. The Syrian Bride. 2004. Israel, France, Germany. The story is set in a Druze village in the Golan Heights right on the Israeli-Syrian border. Living there creates untold troubles for the residents ... such as making it seemingly impossible (due to political strictures) for the bride on one side of the border and the groom on the other to physically reach each other.
7. The Treasure. 2015. Romania. A lovely little film. Two men attempt to find a great grandfather's buried treasure in the family garden. It's very slow-paced, amusing in its little bits of business, with a very adequate ending (not to be a spoiler and tell all). In Romanian.
8. The Wedding Plan. 2016. Israel. A moving film. After a decade of looking for someone to marry (even the matchmakers aren't successful), a young woman decides to trust that God will provide and goes ahead with wedding plans though a groom hasn't yet shown up. In Hebrew.
9. The Women's Balcony. 2016. Israel. A group of neighborhood women work at patching up a rift in their community with the help of a new charismatic rabbi. In Hebrew.
10. Things to Come. (L'Avenir). 2016. France and Germany. Set in Paris and the Grenoble area. Less plot, more reporting about the daily life of the main character, a fifty-ish philosophy professor who follows a good life--job, husband, children, Parisian apartment--but then finds that everything shifts as she acquires a new freedom that she doesn't realize comes with choices that are up to her to make. Isabella Huppert.
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