For all its many, many faults, 2023 was a banner year for international films. The awards season buzz for global gems like Justine Triet’s French courtroom thriller Anatomy of a Fall (released by Neon stateside), Jonathan Glazer’s German-language Holocaust drama Zone of Interest (A24), Hayao Miyazaki’s Japanese anime The Boy and the Heron (GKids), and J.A. Bayona’s Spanish-language real-life survival tale Society of the Snow (Netflix) only scratches the surface.
Among the many many other foreign highlights from last year are Mubi’s Fallen Leaves and How to Have Sex —the first a laconic triumph by Finnish film master Aki Kaurismäki, the latter a stunning debut by Brit first-timer Molly Manning Walker — Sony Pictures Classics’ The Teachers’ Lounge, a German school drama from director Ilker Çatak and Iranian drama Shayda from director Noora Niasari; Agnieszka Holland’s harrowing The Green Border, about Poland’s treatment of would-be refugees on its border to Belarus (acquired by Kino Lorber and Modern Films for domestic release); and Trần Anh Hùng’s French foodie romance The Taste of Things (IFC Films and Sapan Studio).
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Despite this embarrassment of riches, several of the best International movies from last year’s festival circuit are still searching for a home in the U.S.
Here is The Hollywood Reporter‘s very subjective top 10 list of still-unsold international features from 2023 that U.S. audiences deserve to see.
There’s Still Tomorrow
Paola Cortellesi’s black-and-white period dramedy — the story of a domestically abused woman (played by Cortellesi) living in post-WWII Rome —was the number one Italian film of 2023, passing Barbie at the box office. Cortellesi’s directorial debut, at turns tragic, romantic, and very, very funny, filters the style of Italian neo-realism through a 21st-century feminist sensibility.
U.S. Sales: Vision Distribution
City of Wind
Another feature debut, this Mongolian drama from first-timer Lkhagvadulam Purev-Ochir, debuted in Venice, where newcomer Tergel Bold-Erdene took the best actor in the festival’s Horizons sidebar for his turn as Ze, a teenage shaman in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia’s capital city. Ze’s shy romance with city girl Maralaa (Nomin-Erdene Ariunbyamba) is the beating heart of the film but the real surprise comes with Purev-Ochir’s sweetly hopeful take on the “old vs. new” story trope, which negotiates a middle way between ancient tradition and the modern world.
U.S. Sales: Best Friend Forever
Little Girl Blue
Oscar winner Marion Cotillard stars in this critically acclaimed documentary/psychodrama hybrid from Mona Achache. The La Vie en Rose and Inception star plays Achache’s own mother, Carole Achache, a writer, photographer and actress who killed herself in 2016. The Hollywood Reporter‘s review called Little Girl Blue a “powerful, personal [and] brutally honest family portrait.”
U.S. Sales: Charades
Explanation for Everything
A hit out of Venice, where it won the main prize in the Horizons sidebar, this slice of social satire from Hungarian director Gabor Reisz also won over the crowds at the Chicago International Film Festival, winning best film and best screenplay. The story of the rabid tabloid reporting and polarized politics that turns an underachieving high-schooler into an unlikely right-wing cause célèbre feels uncomfortably topical and resonates far beyond its national borders.
U.S. Sales: Films Boutique
Ama Gloria
Marie Amachoukeli’s Ama Gloria wowed them at Cannes this year, where it opened the Critics’ Week sidebar and had reviewers raving over the performance of lead Louise Mauroy-Panzani as the 6-year-old Cléo. The delicate domestic drama about Cléo’s relationship to her widowed father (Arnaud Rebotini) and her Cape Verdean nanny Gloria (Ilça Moreno Zego) explores issues of privilege and the French history of colonialism but is primarily a homage to compassion.
U.S. Sales: Pyramide Films
Just the Two of Us
The formidable Belgian star Virginie Efira (Elle, Benedetta, Other People’s Children) shines in this taut French psychodrama. Director Valérie Donzelli (The Queen of Hearts) strips out the garish genre tropes in her Sleeping With the Enemy plotline — Efira plays a woman whose seemingly ideal husband (Melvil Poupaud) is revealed to be a psychotic abuser — to deliver a terrifyingly realistic portrayal of domestic abuse.
U.S. Sales: Goodfellas
Seven Blessings
Ayelet Menahemi’s crowd-pleasing dramedy following the complicated dynamics of a Moroccan-Israeli family coming together for a week-long wedding celebration swept Israeli’s Film Academy honors but has yet to attract much international attention. Despite the strong local buzz, the film still doesn’t have an international sales agent attached.
U.S. Sales: No sales agent attached
Finally Dawn
Saverio Costanzo’s homage to Fellini and the “Hollywood on the Tiber” days of Rome’s Cinecittà studio would seem an ideal match for cinephiles worldwide. A star-struck young Italian woman ( Rebecca Antonaci) is swept up in a wild night straight out of La Dolce Vita as she tags along the Liz Taylor-ish American movie diva Josephine Esperanto (Lily James) and her entourage, including Willem Dafoe as an American expat art dealer and Rachel Sennott as the up-and-coming actor who wants to be the next Hollywood queen. An exuberant love letter to cinema that still manages to be clear-eyed about the cynicism behind much of the movie magic.
U.S. Sales: UTA
Woman of…
Małgorzata Szumowska and Michał Englert’s tender portrait of a trans woman’s life journey through 45 years of struggle in Poland — a country whose voters just recently ousted their conservative transphobic right-wing government — was hailed at its Venice competition debut as a rare window into a community that still has no official recognition. That fact contributed to the casting of cisgender actress Małgorzata Hajewska-Krzysztofik in the main role, acting schools in Poland remain strictly binary, but trans and non-binary people were involved as consultants and turn up on screen in several supporting roles.
U.S. Sales: Memento Films International
The Mother of All Lies
Despite winning the Golden Eye for best first feature in Cannes and making the 2024 Oscar shortlist for best international feature, Asmae El Moudir‘s Moroccan film is still searching for a U.S. home. The hybrid documentary re-creates events surrounding the bread riots in Casablanca in 1981 and their impact on the filmmaker’s family, using a doll-house scale model of her childhood neighborhood and little figurines to represent family, friends and neighbors. A playful, inventive but also deeply moving examination of family, memory and generational trauma.
U.S. Sales: Autlook Film Sales
