If you can’t tell from Hollywood’s addiction to English-language remakes, English is an important language in the film industry. No, not that written stuff at the bottom of the screen in a foreign film (they’re called subtitles, guys!), but good ol’ spoken ‘American.’ For better or worse, Earth’s most widely spoken tongue is the language of global entertainment; not only does it open a lucrative international market, it brings together creative talents from around the world.
That said, even for the greatest of international directors, transitioning into English isn’t always easy. Take Wong Kar-Wai’sMy Blueberry Nights, which was criticized as a poor translation of the filmmaker’s talents. There’s also renowned Austrian director Michael Haneke, whose English debut was a shot-for-shot remake of his own horror classic, Funny Games. Some respected the message he was trying to send to American audiences, while others found it a pointless indulgence. Roman Polanski, on the other hand, made a convincing (and horrifying) move into English-language film with Repulsion, though the film now takes on uncomfortable undertones in light of the director’s troubling reputation.
Some directors remain successful despite never making the shift into English-language movies, though the alluring roster of talent that comes with English-language entertainment will inevitably come calling. Though acclaimed director Pedro Almodóvar has been extremely successful while sticking to his native Spanish, he’s now making his first English film, A Manual for Cleaning Women, with Cate Blanchett at the helm. The star power and clout of the American film industry supplies a wealth of resources and actors that is hard to turn down. Here are eight English-language debuts from international directors that made the most of these new riches and struck gold.
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8 Prisoners, Denis Villeneuve
Warner Bros.
Canadian Denis Villeneuve started out directing French-language films like Maelström and Polytechnique. Buzz was growing for the director, especially after his knockout drama Incendies, and he had earned a reputation for visual mastery and imaginative storytelling. His Hollywood debut, Prisoners, built on this reputation, shocking audiences with a tense, genre-melding thriller that meticulously combined artful cinematography, impeccable acting, and perfectly calibrated tension. The stacked ensemble cast, including Jake Gyllenhaal and Hugh Jackman, cranked up the emotional impact of the film, which centered on two families left reeling after the disappearance of their daughters. Villeneuve has gone on to become one of the most accomplished directors of his generation, with Blade Runner 2049 and Arrival affirming this status. He continues to ride high on the success of his latest hit, Dune, picking up a slew of Academy Award nominations for the sci-fi epic at the 2022 Oscars.
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7 Sense and Sensibility, Ang Lee
Sony Motion Pictures
Sense and Sensibility was the film that allowed Taiwanese master director Ang Lee to assert himself in the English language and gain a truly international reach. An adaptation of a classic Jane Austen novel, this 1995 film follows three sisters and their suitors. Your heart will be warm (and its strings completely worn-out) by the end. Lee’s earlier films, Eat Drink Man Woman and The Wedding Banquet, were also romantic comedy-dramas with themes of family at their core. Here, Lee approaches the source material with his warm touch, well-developed characters, and sweeping visuals. Written by and starring Emma Thompson as Elinor, it is widely considered one of the best Austen adaptations. Its thoughtful conception of female characters and emotionally rich, nuanced portrayal of romance stand the test of time. It’s hard not to cry happy tears along with Elinor when Edward (Hugh Grant) finally proposes. Lee would go on to back up this English-language achievement with classics like Brokeback Mountain, and the stunning Life of Pi, both of which won him a Best Director Oscar.
6 A Little Princess, Alfonso Cuarón
Alfonso Cuarón’s first English-language film demonstrates his keen talent for communicating point of view. The way his subjects see the world shapes the work of the award-winning Mexican director, be they little girls, teenage wizards, or adults living in a dystopia. Cuarón is a member of the talented “three amigos” group of Mexican directors who has taken the film industry (and the Oscars) by storm in recent years. A Little Princess was praised for its cinematography, thanks to Cuarón’s frequent collaborator, the prolific Emmanuel Lubezki (arguably the “fourth amigo”).
A loose adaptation of the novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett, the movie follows Sara, a girl who is sent to boarding school after her father leaves to fight in World War I. After he’s presumed dead, Sara is tormented by the cruel Miss Minchin and is forced to use her imagination to overcome her circumstances. Cuarón still reflects fondly on the film, and there’s no question that it helped his career soar to new heights. His English-language filmography grew impressively after the picture, with English-language box office successes like The Prisoner of Azkaban,Children of Men, and Gravitycementing him as one of the most talented working directors.
5 The Lobster, Yorgos Lanthimos
A24
Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos was already ‘a favorite’ for his original, darkly comic dramas like Attenberg, Alps and Dogtooth. But it was The Lobster, his first English movie, that truly catapulted Lanthimos into the spotlight. He makes use of the same matter-of-fact violence and deadpan dialogue that characterizes his Greek work, plus a portly Colin Farrell as protagonist David. The film is set at a wilderness retreat where David is told that he has 45 days to find a partner before he is turned into an animal of his choice. Rebellious loners terrorize the outskirts of the forest and the retreat encourages the participants to hunt as many of them as they can to win extra time. Lanthimos seems fascinated with exploring the strange confines of interpersonal relationships, creating rules and quirks within his singular films that shine a light on human nature. The Lobster is disturbing, funny and clever, all at once. Lanthimos will continue building on the success of his subsequent English films with his next project, Poor Things, is a play on the classic Frankenstein story.
4 Snowpiercer, Bong Joon-ho
The Weinstein Company
Now one of the world’s most respected directors, Bong Joon-ho went from making well-respected Korean language films like The Host and Memories of Murder to producing an English-language hit with Snowpiercer. Adapted from a French graphic novel, Snowpiercer is an imaginative action film set in a train traversing a dystopian ice-world. As the hierarchies and senseless inequalities of the world manifest in the train’s hellish inner workings, Curtis Everett (Chris Evans) works his way from the back to the front, leading a proletarian revolt one car at a time. Starring Tilda Swinton, Jamie Bell and Song Kang-ho, the film bridged Bong’s filmmaking prowess from Korea to North America and Europe. His favorite themes of capitalism and his trademark fusion of dark themes and humor worked just as well abroad. The movie has gone on to spawn a successful American TV series of the same name.
3 21 Grams, Alejandro Iñárritu
Focus Features
Another member of the Mexican power trio “the three amigos,” Alejandro Iñárritu burst onto the scene with Amores Perros, a film that centers on three distinct stories brought together by a car accident; his English-language debut, 21 Grams, was part of the same “trilogy of death.” It takes place in Memphis and centers on another fatal car accident, following the lives of the people involved in a perspective-shifting, time-jumbled narrative. As the movie progresses, some scenes resurface from the point of view of different characters. Starring Naomi Watts, Sean Penn and Benicio del Toro, the painful tangle of lives and emotions manifests with a gut-punch, particularly thanks to Watts, who plays a bereft mother who has lost her family in the accident. Moving and brutally insightful into human relationships, Iñáritu’s English debut kept him true to form as an incredibly talented director, no matter the language. Given this strong start, his later success with Birdman and The Revenant was no surprise.
2 Breaking the Waves, Lars von Trier
Guild Pathé Cinema
Most famous for his boundary-pushing, controversial films, Lars von Trier has never been one to play by the rules. His films often explore difficult material like mental health (in Melancholia) or sex addiction, leaving viewers with a pit in their stomachs. Breaking the Waves, the first film in his “Golden Heart” trilogy, was the first fully English language feature from the Danish arthouse master. Emily Watson plays Bess, a naive but kind woman who marries an oil rig worker named Jan who comes from outside her small, extremely religious Scottish community. When he is paralyzed in an accident, Jan makes a painful request to Bess: she must make love to others in his place. A difficult, powerful exploration of faith in the most barren of places, Von Trier expands the definition of what that word even means. The film was a strong debut for Emily Watson, too, who earned an Oscar nomination for her performance. Von Trier is clearly fluent in the emotional language of cinema, no matter what language his actors are speaking.
1 Blow-Up, Michelangelo Antonioni
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Michelangelo Antonioni was one of the 20th century’s greatest directors. His British arthouse thriller, Blow-Up, came after years of success in Italian filmmaking, with his films like L’avventura, La Notte and L’eclisse becoming pillars of cinema. Riding on all of this success, it’s impressive that his English-language debut still holds up as one of the defining films of the ’60s. He would later go on to direct other classics in English like Zabriskie Point and The Passenger with Jack Nicholson, but Blow-Up would remain one of his most famous and influential works. Here, he assembles all the ingredients to a suspenseful crime thriller — a murder, a witness, a piece of evidence — then uses his talents to throw these elements promptly into question. A complacent London fashion photographer (David Hemmings) thinks he might have seen a murder in the park, but the mystery fades into obscurity before it even gets going. Mystifying until the final shot, nothing is quite as it seems in this classic which Antonioni described to Roger Ebert in 1969 as being “not about a murder but about a photographer.”
