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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01:02Episode 1
Foreign-Language Oscar Winners Teaser
Episode 1
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1:29:23Episode 2
Bicycle Thieves
Episode 2
Directed by Vittorio De Sica • 1948 • Italy
Starring Lamberto Maggiorani, Enzo Staiola, Lianella CarellHailed 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 ...
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Rashomon
Episode 3
Directed by Akira Kurosawa • 1950 • Japan
Starring Toshiro Mifune, Machiko Kyo, Masayuki MoriA 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...
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1:29:23Episode 4
Gate of Hell
Episode 4
Directed by Teinosuke Kinugasa • 1953 • Japan
Starring Kazuo Hasegawa, Machiko KyoA 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...
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1:33:34Episode 5
Samurai I: Musashi Miyamoto
Episode 5
Directed by Hiroshi Inagaki • 1954 • Japan
Starring Toshiro Mifune, Rentaro Mikuni, Kuroemon OnoeIn 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...
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La strada
Episode 6
Directed by Federico Fellini • 1954 • Italy
Starring Giulietta Masina, Anthony Quinn, Richard BasehartWith 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 ...
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Mon oncle
Episode 7
Directed by Jacques Tati • 1958 • France, Italy
Starring Jacques Tati, Jean-Pierre Zola, Adrienne ServantieSlapstick 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,...
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1:47:49Episode 8
Black Orpheus
Episode 8
Directed by Marcel Camus • 1959 • Brazil, France
Starring Breno Mello, Marpessa Dawn, Lourdes de OliveiraWinner 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 ...
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1:29:29Episode 9
The Virgin Spring
Episode 9
Directed by Ingmar Bergman • 1960 • Sweden
Starring Max von Sydow, Birgitta Valberg, Gunnel LindblomWinner 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...
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1:29:56Episode 10
Through a Glass Darkly
Episode 10
Directed by Ingmar Bergman • 1961 • Sweden
Starring Harriet Andersson, Max von Sydow, Gunnar BjörnstrandWhile 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 ...
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8½
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...
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1:58:39Episode 12
Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow
Episode 12
Directed by Vittorio De Sica • 1963 • Italy, France
Starring Sophia Loren, Marcello Mastroianni, Aldo GiuffrèWinner 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...
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2:07:26Episode 13
The Shop on Main Street
Episode 13
Directed by Ján Kadár and Elmar Klos • 1965 • Czechoslovakia
Starring Idá Kaminská, Josef Kroner, František ZvaríkAn 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...
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1:33:19Episode 14
Closely Watched Trains
Episode 14
Directed by Jiří Menzel • 1966 • Czechoslovakia
Starring Václav Neckář, Josef Somr, Vlastimil BrodskýAt 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...
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2:27:26Episode 15
WAR AND PEACE: Part 1
Episode 15
ANDREI BOLKONSKY
Directed by Sergei Bondarchuk • 1966 • Soviet UnionAt 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...
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1:38:01Episode 16
WAR AND PEACE: Part 2
Episode 16
NATASHA ROSTOVA
Directed by Sergei Bondarchuk • 1966 • Soviet UnionAt 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...
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1:21:40Episode 17
WAR AND PEACE: Part 3
Episode 17
THE YEAR 1812
Directed by Sergei Bondarchuk • 1967 • Soviet UnionAt 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...
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1:36:37Episode 18
WAR AND PEACE: Part 4
Episode 18
PIERRE BEZUKHOV
Directed by Sergei Bondarchuk • 1967 • Soviet UnionAt 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...
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Z
Episode 19
Directed by Costa-Gavras • 1969 • Algeria, France
Starring Yves Montand, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Irene PapasA 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...
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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...
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2:22:14Episode 21
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.
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2:43:30Episode 22
The Tin Drum
Episode 22
Directed by Volker Schlöndorff • 1979 • Germany
Starring David Bennent, Mario Adorf, Angela WinklerOskar 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...
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3:09:16Episode 23
FANNY AND ALEXANDER: Theatrical Version
Episode 23
Directed by Ingmar Bergman • 1982 • Sweden
Starring Pernilla Allwin, Bertil Guve, Ewa FrölingThrough 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 ...
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1:43:32Episode 24
Babette’s Feast
Episode 24
Directed by Gabriel Axel • 1987 • Denmark
Starring Stéphane Audran, Birgitte Federspiel, Bodil KjerAt 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...