Foreign-Language Oscar Winners

Foreign-Language Oscar Winners

25 Episodes

A cross section of the last seven decades of international cinema, this lineup of past winners of the Academy Award for best foreign-language film includes masterpieces by titans like Akira Kurosawa, Federico Fellini, Ingmar Bergman, and Luis Buñuel; high-water marks of the Czechoslovak New Wave; a Soviet epic of unparalleled scale; and, of course, a handful of left-field surprises (it is the Academy Awards, after all). 

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Foreign-Language Oscar Winners
  • Foreign-Language Oscar Winners Teaser

    Episode 1

  • Bicycle Thieves

    Episode 2

    Directed by Vittorio De Sica • 1948 • Italy
    Starring Lamberto Maggiorani, Enzo Staiola, Lianella Carell

    Hailed around the world as one of the greatest movies ever made, the Academy Award-winning BICYCLE THIEVES, directed by Vittorio De Sica, defined an era in cinema. In poverty-stricken postwar ...

  • Rashomon

    Episode 3

    Directed by Akira Kurosawa • 1950 • Japan
    Starring Toshiro Mifune, Machiko Kyo, Masayuki Mori

    A riveting psychological thriller that investigates the nature of truth and the meaning of justice, RASHOMON is widely considered one of the greatest films ever made. Four people give different accou...

  • Gate of Hell

    Episode 4

    Directed by Teinosuke Kinugasa • 1953 • Japan
    Starring Kazuo Hasegawa, Machiko Kyo

    A winner of Academy Awards for best foreign-language film and best costume design, GATE OF HELL is a visually sumptuous, psychologically penetrating work from Teinosuke Kinugasa. In the midst of epic, violent intr...

  • Samurai I: Musashi Miyamoto

    Episode 5

    Directed by Hiroshi Inagaki • 1954 • Japan
    Starring Toshiro Mifune, Rentaro Mikuni, Kuroemon Onoe

    In the first part of the epic Samurai Trilogy, Toshiro Mifune thunders onto the screen as the iconic title character. When we meet him, Miyamoto is a wide-eyed romantic, dreaming of military glory i...

  • La strada

    Episode 6

    Directed by Federico Fellini • 1954 • Italy
    Starring Giulietta Masina, Anthony Quinn, Richard Basehart

    With this breakthrough film, Federico Fellini launched both himself and his wife and collaborator Giulietta Masina to international stardom, breaking with the neorealism of his early career in ...

  • Mon oncle

    Episode 7

    Directed by Jacques Tati • 1958 • France, Italy
    Starring Jacques Tati, Jean-Pierre Zola, Adrienne Servantie

    Slapstick prevails again when Jacques Tati’s eccentric, old-fashioned hero, Monsieur Hulot, is set loose in Villa Arpel, the geometric, oppressively ultramodern home of his brother-in-law,...

  • Black Orpheus

    Episode 8

    Directed by Marcel Camus • 1959 • Brazil, France
    Starring Breno Mello, Marpessa Dawn, Lourdes de Oliveira

    Winner of both the Academy Award for best foreign-language film and the Cannes Film Festival’s Palme d’Or, Marcel Camus’ BLACK ORPHEUS (ORFEU NEGRO) brings the ancient Greek myth of Orpheus ...

  • The Virgin Spring

    Episode 9

    Directed by Ingmar Bergman • 1960 • Sweden
    Starring Max von Sydow, Birgitta Valberg, Gunnel Lindblom

    Winner of the Academy Award for best foreign-language film, Ingmar Bergman’s THE VIRGIN SPRING is a harrowing tale of faith, revenge, and savagery in medieval Sweden. With austere simplicity, the...

  • Through a Glass Darkly

    Episode 10

    Directed by Ingmar Bergman • 1961 • Sweden
    Starring Harriet Andersson, Max von Sydow, Gunnar Björnstrand

    While vacationing on a remote island retreat, a family finds its fragile ties tested when daughter Karin (an astonishing Harriet Andersson) discovers her father (Gunnar Björnstrand) has been ...

  • 8½
    2:19:35
    Episode 11

    Episode 11

    Directed by Federico Fellini • 1963 • Italy

    Marcello Mastroianni plays Guido Anselmi, a director whose new project is collapsing around him, along with his life. One of the greatest films about film ever made, Federico Fellini's 8 1/2 (Otto e mezzo) turns one man's artistic crisis into a grand e...

  • Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow

    Episode 12

    Directed by Vittorio De Sica • 1963 • Italy, France
    Starring Sophia Loren, Marcello Mastroianni, Aldo Giuffrè

    Winner of the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar at the 1964 Academy Awards, YESTERDAY, TODAY AND TOMORROW is a sparklingly original comedy that casts Marcello Mastroianni and Sophia Loren...

  • The Shop on Main Street

    Episode 13

    Directed by Ján Kadár and Elmar Klos • 1965 • Czechoslovakia
    Starring Idá Kaminská, Josef Kroner, František Zvarík

    An inept Slovak peasant is torn between greed and guilt when the Nazi-backed bosses of his town appoint him “Aryan controller” of an old Jewish widow’s button shop. Humor and traged...

  • Closely Watched Trains

    Episode 14

    Directed by Jiří Menzel • 1966 • Czechoslovakia
    Starring Václav Neckář, Josef Somr, Vlastimil Brodský

    At a village railway station in occupied Czechoslovakia, a bumbling dispatcher’s apprentice longs to liberate himself from his virginity. Oblivious to the war and the resistance that surrounds h...

  • WAR AND PEACE: Part 1

    Episode 15

    ANDREI BOLKONSKY
    Directed by Sergei Bondarchuk • 1966 • Soviet Union

    At the height of the Cold War, the Soviet film industry set out to prove it could outdo Hollywood with a production that would dazzle the world: a titanic, awe-inspiring adaptation of Tolstoy’s classic tome in which the fates o...

  • WAR AND PEACE: Part 2

    Episode 16

    NATASHA ROSTOVA
    Directed by Sergei Bondarchuk • 1966 • Soviet Union

    At the height of the Cold War, the Soviet film industry set out to prove it could outdo Hollywood with a production that would dazzle the world: a titanic, awe-inspiring adaptation of Tolstoy’s classic tome in which the fates of...

  • WAR AND PEACE: Part 3

    Episode 17

    THE YEAR 1812
    Directed by Sergei Bondarchuk • 1967 • Soviet Union

    At the height of the Cold War, the Soviet film industry set out to prove it could outdo Hollywood with a production that would dazzle the world: a titanic, awe-inspiring adaptation of Tolstoy’s classic tome in which the fates of t...

  • WAR AND PEACE: Part 4

    Episode 18

    PIERRE BEZUKHOV
    Directed by Sergei Bondarchuk • 1967 • Soviet Union

    At the height of the Cold War, the Soviet film industry set out to prove it could outdo Hollywood with a production that would dazzle the world: a titanic, awe-inspiring adaptation of Tolstoy’s classic tome in which the fates of...

  • Z
    2:07:12
    Episode 19

    Z

    Episode 19

    Directed by Costa-Gavras • 1969 • Algeria, France
    Starring Yves Montand, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Irene Papas

    A pulse-pounding political thriller, Greek expatriate director Costa-Gavras’s Z was one of the cinematic sensations of the late sixties, and remains among the most vital dispatches from t...

  • Amarcord

    Episode 20

    Directed by Federico Fellini • 1973 • France, Italy

    This carnivalesque portrait of provincial Italy during the fascist period, the most personal film from Federico Fellini, satirizes the director's youth and turns daily life into a circus of social rituals, adolescent desires, male fantasies, an...

  • Dersu Uzala

    Episode 21

    Directed by Akira Kurosawa • 1975 • Soviet Union, Japan

    The Russian army sends an explorer on an expedition to the snowy Siberian wilderness where he makes friends with a seasoned local hunter.

  • The Tin Drum

    Episode 22

    Directed by Volker Schlöndorff • 1979 • Germany
    Starring David Bennent, Mario Adorf, Angela Winkler

    Oskar is born in Germany in 1924 with an advanced intellect. Repulsed by the hypocrisy of adults and the irresponsibility of society, he refuses to grow older after his third birthday. While the c...

  • FANNY AND ALEXANDER: Theatrical Version

    Episode 23

    Directed by Ingmar Bergman • 1982 • Sweden
    Starring Pernilla Allwin, Bertil Guve, Ewa Fröling

    Through the eyes of ten-year-old Alexander, we witness the delights and conflicts of the Ekdahl family, a sprawling bourgeois clan in turn-of-the-twentieth-century Sweden. Ingmar Bergman intended FANNY ...

  • Babette’s Feast

    Episode 24

    Directed by Gabriel Axel • 1987 • Denmark
    Starring Stéphane Audran, Birgitte Federspiel, Bodil Kjer

    At once a rousing paean to artistic creation, a delicate evocation of divine grace, and the ultimate film about food, the Oscar-winning BABETTE’S FEAST is a deeply beloved treasure of cinema. Dire...