The 25 Best Foreign Films of 2018

10. The Heiresses | Marcelo Martinessi | Paraguay

Driven by an incredibly heartfelt tour de force performance of Ana Brun, The Heiresses is an original and piercing romantic drama about the lives of the Quinquagenarian women amidst the financial crisis that has hit them hard. Chela’s (played gracefully by Ana) personal and social life comes crumbling down after the incarceration of her lover due to bank debt.

Swallowing their fluffed pride and pressing their egos, Chiquita (played like a badass by Margarita Irún) sells their valuable and inherited possessions in agreement with Chela. With every item going off the shelf from their lavish home, Chela’s reluctance to provide the cab service to a group of elderly wealthy ladies starts to wither off. It is during this service she encounters a young woman who invigorates the shrivelled feeling of romance, taking her by a storm.

The absence of Chiquita gives Chela an opportunity to self-explore and introspect her life that was primarily governed by Chiquita. Film-maker Marcelo Martinessi never provides an easy answer. Like the lead character searching for the true meaning of love, we are left in the middle of a crisis these characters are facing to understand them and decipher their feelings. Read the complete review here.

9. Sunday’s Illness | Ramon Salazar | Spain

Sunday’s Illness is a twisted but sublime psychological drama which has estranged mother and daughter at its centre, descended from the Bergman’s universe, and has a spirit of Antonioni. The visuals are transcendental, often merged with the narrative that gets murkier as the plot thickens. The film plays out like a disquieting thriller that has arguably one of the most shocking endings of the year. The film is right up there in the best of the year films.

Sunday’s Illness featured in our The 10 Best Netflix Original Films of 2018

8. The Wolf House | Cristóbal León, Joaquin Cociña | Chile

If ever Brothers Quay, David Lynch and Guy Maddin decide to make an animation film, I am certain it would look like The Wolf House. The eeriness & meticulous sound design of Lynch, Guy Maddin’s eccentricity and sad spirit of lost films are blended with the Lewis Carrol’s ‘Alice in Wonderland trouble-land (Colonia Dignidad)’ that results in the disturbing phantasmagoric narrative that pushes the boundary of unconventional cinema. It is not only the most inventive & imaginative animated film of the century but it re-writes the grammar for animation based on Manichaeism subjectivity that often alternates between beautiful and grotesque, horror and hope.

The entire space including the characters develops from paints, papier mâché, sculpture and paintings that undergo metamorphosis to reshape itself as if the objects have gained consciousness, and fall apart – like a cellular being coming alive in a house embodying Kafka, soon to disintegrate and extinct as if it never existed.  A debut feature film from the duo of Chilean filmmakers Joaquín Cociña and Cristóbal León, The Wolf House is a dense and mysterious psychological drama that stitches the real-life ‘Colonia Dignidad’ terrorising inhuman acts with fables like ‘The Three Little Pigs’, ‘Red Riding Hood’ and ‘Snow White’. You can read the complete review of the most inventive and imaginative animation film of the 21st Century.

7. Roma | Alfonso Cuaron | Mexico

Roma is a staggering achievement in narrating the most intimate and personal work of Alfonso Cuarón. The film feels like reading the most vivid and eloquently written chapters from a personal diary of an exuberant child. Brought up by a devoted woman (first-time actress Yalitza Aparicio) who is nanny and housekeeper, it’s a Cuaron’s love letter to all the nannies out there, who bring up the kids as their own.

Roma is a heartfelt story of two women belonging to different social and financial strata struggling to keep together amidst personal tragedy, emotional turmoil and a political uprising. Shot in 65 mm and glorious black and white, Cuarón let the camera glide inside the house as if it’s a character, keenly observing the family dynamics and piecing together their quotidian lives. It’s lyrical and heart-breaking.

Why Roma is essential for Young film-makers.  

6. A Family Tour | Ying Liang | Taiwan, Hong Kong

The Chinese-born, Hong Kong-based director Ying Liang returns to film-making with ‘A Family Tour’ after his last feature ‘When Night Falls’ which created a political and social stir in China. It is his first feature film to screen at the New York Film Festival (NYFF-56). It’s an extraordinary autobiographical film that makes a subtle but a bold political statement against the authority stifling his freedom of expression.

The film reflects Ying’s agony and internal raging grief. He conjures up his rage and frustration evoked by a sense of displacement, develops into an emotional catharsis and embodies it in this film, in the character of film-maker Yang Shu. Ying examines the lack of a sense of belonging and an identical crisis in this moving and poignant tale of a family. You can read the NYFF-56 review of the film here. 

5. Birds of Passage | Cristina Gallego, Ciro Guerra | Colombia, Mexico

Ciro Guerra and Cristina Gallego construct an epic narrative around Wayúu people, hooking the film in the deeply rooted tradition and culture that feels threatened when the family gets involved in a drug business. Often reminding of Godfather with a woman taking the centre stage, “Birds of Passage” finds inspiration from “The Sopranos” except the humour.

4. Shoplifters | Hirokazu Kore-eda | Japan

Soothing, understated and so emotionally moving that you wouldn’t even notice when tears stream down your face, the newest film by Hirokazu Kore-eda is a humanist masterpiece. Having explored how true fatherhood doesn’t just involve a blood relation in his 2013 film “Like Father Like Son”, Kore-eda takes up the tough job of humanizing a bunch of misfit thieves by questioning the very essence of what makes a family.

In doing so, he dwells his naturalistic, heart-warming narrative structure in one of his finest, most deceptive and heartbreakingly bleak story about what binds people together This is Kore-eda at his most realistically best.  Read the complete review here.

3. Burning | Lee Chang-dong | South Korea

Burning is a stunning opaque story riddle with the ambiguous enigmas and uncertain turn of events. It’s a well crafted and stunningly muted cinematographed film with absolute control on its writing, displayed in the powerful characterization and a well-earned climax. The greatest achievement of Burning lies in the controlled and restrained narration that uses minimal exposition, relying on visual cues to express the airtight tension among the characters. Read the complete review here.

2. An Elephant Sitting Still | Hu Bo | China

‘An Elephant Sitting Still’ is a meditation on nihilism. An allegory of fatalism. It’s a tale of macabre spiritual crisis. Souls breathing in a wasteland, scarred by despondency for life, are lulled by hopelessness. Burning with rage for the pain inflicted on them, they seek salvation in the myth. The myth believed with such stubbornness it becomes a delusional reality. A symbol of hope and change. As the legend goes, an elephant sits in a zoo and refuses to eat or move as if contemplating the purpose for its existence. In a way, it seems to echo the characters’ alienated existence. Read the complete review here.

1. The Wild Pear Tree | Nuri Bilge Ceylan |Turkey

“The Wild Pear Tree” is a thick, rich and layered character study of a young man whose internal turmoil is often manifested in the socio-political contradiction and east-west conflict in Turkey. Like the Turkish Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk, Nuri Ceylan captures the languid, ruminative quality of a Chekhov story.

The title of the film is derived from the collection of short stories written by the lead protagonist, a young educated but unemployed Sinan, who mixes fiction with real-life experiences of growing up in a small town that he doesn’t relate to. Nuri Ceylan patiently sketches the journey of a restless and stubborn Sinan who is desperately trying to get his manuscript published in his home town while dealing with his father’s debt that brought financial crisis and getting into a debate with everyone he meets along during his stay. Read the complete review of the film here.