Hardly a deep cut, but Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon is absolutely fantastic.

A master of mystical superhuman martial arts is trying to retire, but a suspiciously talented thief keeps making off with his unbreakable sword. The movie is sold on and remembered for its acrobatic and set-destroying fight scenes, and if you just watched those highlights, you’d have a decent time. But you’d miss the clever characterization, the gorgeous cinematography, the excellent score, and on and on and on. If you just want wire-fu then watch Iron Monkey. This is a movie about all the small moments between complex people. It opens with ten minutes of dialog on purpose. The combat is what happens when characters fail.

Train to Busan is without a doubt the best zombie movie I have ever seen.

I found these through now defunct/gone bad sites, but Fei Ren Zai (非人哉) and All Saints Street (万圣街). Both series are animated adaptations of webcomics from the same guy.

Both have similar premises but are vastly different. Fei Ren Zai is a slice of life about mythological creatures, deities, and other such creatures from Chinese mythology living in modern day, done in short skits, pretty much being animated versions of the 4 panel comics the webcomic series is.

All Saints Street follows something similar, except for the fact that it’s western creatures (vampires, devils, angels, mummies, zombies, werewolves) living in modern times and doesn’t really have that 4 panel comic style Fei Ren Zai has. It follows a demon named Neil Bowman who moves from Hell (Australia if I remember correctly) to live with a vampire friend of his and ends up in the first few episodes (maybe around 10 or less if I’m not wrong?) living with a vampire, mummy, werewolf, and his landlord, an angel and eventually his younger sister. All under a single roof. It’s available on Crunchyroll with a Japanese dub, but I personally don’t like it. Especially since I really love the use of vocaloid for the original Chinese dub theme song and love the Chinese voices (props to the voice actors).

Also, France’s Code Lyoko is an absolute favorite of mine because of how awesome I thought it was growing up and how I still think it’s awesome. Mid-2000s cartoon where a group of 2D animated students at an academy must sneak off to go to a 3D CGI virtual world made possible by a radioactive material powered supercomputer that has a deadly computer virus like villainous thing housed inside the virtual world, trying to take out the kids so it can probably take over and get rid of all humans. If you don’t wanna be confused on episode 1, as you’re thrown in with no explanation, I recommend the episodes X.A.N.A. Awakens part 1 & 2.

Your Name makes me feel nostalgia for a childhood I never had and its fucking gorgeous.

• Rusalka
• 2LDK

For a serious drama: Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources, a shockingly good pair of French films that start when an idealistic city dweller moves out to the countryside to start farming on some valuable land that the locals would rather went to them.

Much less seriously: Le Concert. A French comedy-drama about a Russian conductor forced out of his prestigious role after a falling out with the Soviet leadership, who many years later gets an opportunity to re-form his orchestra out of a rag-tag group who haven’t played in years, and travel with them to Paris to give the eponymous concert, performing the same piece that he was conducting at the moment a KGB agent stormed in to strip him of his title. There are some more layers to it that give the movie some brilliant genuine heart, in addition to the hilarious hijinks of the premise.

I’ll just add an extra one that doesn’t really fit, but is kinda close. Death and the Maiden, by Ariel Dorfman. Doesn’t fit both because it’s a play rather than a movie or TV show, and because it might be originally English (I’m honestly not sure and have seen contrary answers about it—even in my copy of the play itself it’s unclear, with references to the “world premiere” in England being after it “was staged and opened in…Chile”). But regardless of the original language, it’s very much not from an anglo perspective, being written by a Chilean and set in post-Pinochet Chile (technically, it’s described as being potentially any country post dictatorship, but it’s primarily written for Chile). It’s about a husband who accidentally welcomes into their home a man whom his wife swears was her warden and rapist while she was imprisoned by the dictatorial regime, and the play is all centred around “is she right, and will her husband believe her?”

Pridyider, the Filipino movie about a haunted fridge. Haven’t been able to find a copy of it in years unfortunately.

• Seventeen Moments of Spring
• Kin-dza-dza!
• Train to Busan
• New World
• Parasite
• City of God
• Fist of Legend
• Drunken Master II
• The Raid
• Pan’s Labyrinth
• Stalker
• Brother

For Korean media:

TV shows:

• Beyond Evil
• Moving
• D.P.

Movies:

• The Handmaiden
• Parasite
• Decision to Leave
• Old Boy

Cinema Paradiso

Portuguese Dragon Ball Z ranks up there.

• Bangkok Dangerous, the original one not with Nicage.

Im Westen nichts Neues (All Quiet on the Western Front). A movie about WWI from the German perspective. While not 100% accurate, it does a great job of showing the harrowing trench warfare, the propaganda, and the out-of-touch militarism in the higher ranks. I highly recommend it.

A much older one: Le Grand Vadrouille (The Great Escape). A French WWII comedy about a few British pilots that need to escape occupied France. There is a little bit of English but it’s predominantly French in language. While not all movies from that age have stood the test of time (e.g. Les Gendarmes are quite racist), this one does a decent job!

Persepolis, the tragic animated story of how Iran transformes from a modern and rich country to a religious dictatorship

I loved bron|broen (remade by Americans as the bridge, but that’s bound to be lame in comparison). Great detective show set in Denmark and Sweden (? It’s been ages, don’t judge me). This is reasonably old tv series. Some great demonstrations of neurodivergence from (what feels like) a previous decade

Also Rain was a great Scandinavian sci-fi series (Netflix?)