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

• 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

Portuguese Dragon Ball Z ranks up there.

The Handmaiden by Park Chan-wook is fantastic for movies.

For books, Roadside Picnic by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky, and the movie adaptation Stalker by Tarkovsky, are sci-fi classics.

Human Acts is another amazing book, this time from Han Kang.

Dark (German/Netflix)

Hmm, if I sort my Letterboxd watched list by my highest rating, the first non-english movie to come up is Parasite. I don’t think that’s actually my fave, but it’s up there.

I liked Monkey Man, best non-english language movie I’ve seen so far this year.

3 Idiots, just like anyone who’s gone through engineering school and has seen it.

Seven Samurai and Rashoman

RRR, this shit has everything. Great fights, cool story, great landscapes from all over India, amazing VFX and art direction. Great musical interludes too. Absolutely recommended.

Series:

• Dark: I love this series. It’s complex and smart and isn’t afraid to let the viewer think and not hold our hand. I re-watch this at least once a year, sometimes more. The show runners also made another series, 1899, which I liked - but didn’t love - and Netflix killed it after only one season.
• Alta Mar/High Seas: The first season especially just captured my heart. It’s a fun murder-on-a-cruise-liner scenario with absolutely lavish set dressing, costumes, etc. The cast is a delight. There are a few unnecessary twists and the subsequent seasons didn’t grab me as hard, but this is one I happily come back to periodically.
• Paranormal: This is, in some ways, only an “okay” series if I’m honest. The stories are solid, but mid-tier, the effects are pretty low grade, and the episodes didn’t connect well. But why I still have a fondness for this one: This series wasn’t just set in Egypt, it was an Egyptian production. So you don’t have some of the baggage of Hollywood/the U.S. or even other, major media countries. It’s refreshing to get a different cultural view occasionally.
• Control-z: This was a fun, stylish mystery series set in a Mexican high-school. Not terribly deep and after the first season the quality drops pretty quickly, but it was enjoyable.
• Squid Game: Who doesn’t love a game? :)
• Post Mortem: No One Dies in Skarnes: Not very long series but it was enjoyable if you like the possibly over used trope of someone coming back from the dead and the challenges they encounter.
• Katla: A short Icelandic supernatural series. Creepy vibes aplenty.
• Money Heist: Spanish bank heist series. Good, not great, but good. A little predictable in places, a little unpredictable in places. Went for several seasons and spawned a couple of spin-offs.
• Fallet: An interestingly little series from Sweden. The premise is a stretch, but the characters were kind of endearing. I enjoyed it.

Movies:
I know I’ve watched a lot more foreign films recently that I liked than this, but I’m having a hard time recalling any that stand out. Here’s still a few I felt like mentioning:

Classics: Pan’s Labyrinth, Run Lola Run, Seven Samurai.

A few you might not have heard of:

• Errementari: a stylish, enjoyable fable of a blacksmith and the devil
• The Little Switzerland: A silly little comedy set in Spain. Not a lot of depth, but entertaining.

• Rusalka
• 2LDK

RRR the movie is so good

Pretty intense but I thought the Seediq Bale films were really good.

There are many good thriller/horror movies in spanish.

• La piel que habito
• REC
• Los ojos de julia
• La cara oculta (I think this one’s from Colombia)

Shutter is also a great Thai horror movie.

From my country Murderess (Φόνισσα - Greek) from last year is pretty impactful.

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.

Shaolin Soccer for sure