5 Of The Best Streaming Services For Foreign Films In 2024
As someone whose first and foremost passion is cinema, I often find the major streaming services lacking in the breadth of films they offer. These services tend to be very English-language dominant in their offerings and rarely have films available made before the year 1990. They aren't all terrible. For instance, Netflix features a pretty strong selection of mainstream Hindi-language pictures from the last 30 years, and Max is under the same corporate umbrella as Turner Classic Movies, which means there's a decent selection of classic Hollywood favorites there. It's nice to have these pockets, but as a whole, they make up a small percentage of what these streamers offer, which ends up being a lot of junky television shows and movies you'd expect to see on a basic cable station in the mid-2000s.
Not every streaming service is like that though. There are platforms out there where the entire mission is to give you a one-stop shop for all that cinema can be, ranging from the beginnings of the art form to the present day, and they go all over the world to select titles to show you. These are the services I find myself using on a near-daily basis because I know there is a strong chance that the film I decide to watch will be aesthetically striking, formally inventive, and unlike most of the mediocre filler that a major streamer received in a licensing deal with a Hollywood studio. Plus, no ads.
The Criterion Channel
If you are a movie lover that can only have one streaming service — major or minor — that you subscribe to, it should be The Criterion Channel. For decades, the Criterion Collection has been the premiere distributor of classic and international cinema with its extensive curated home video offerings. With The Criterion Channel, the company brings that same ethos to the streaming world, though the platform offers an even broader look at the cinematic landscape. This includes recent world cinema favorites, exciting genre fare, and the art-house classics that the company is best known for, featuring works by true international legends like Ingmar Bergman, Akira Kurosawa, Federico Fellini, Agnès Varda, Yasujirõ Ozu, and more.
The Criterion Channel introduces a host of new films every single month and curates them into specialized collections. These could be the work of a particular director, actor, or studio, but they could also be a group of movies thematically tied together, like the "Foreign-Language Oscar Winners," "Interdimensional Romance," and "Cat Movies" collections. Alongside all of the films The Criterion Channel offers is a plethora of supplementary material like audio commentaries, interviews, and video essays about the works. Among these is the ongoing original program "Adventures in Moviegoing," which includes interviews with acclaimed cinema artists (such as Greta Gerwig, Sofia Coppola, and Guillermo del Toro) and a curated selection of some of their favorite films. For just $10.99 a month, The Criterion Channel is a movie lover's streaming dream.
Mubi
When it first hit the scene, Mubi had quite an intriguing setup. Instead of having this vast library of titles that you would endlessly scroll through, the service would add one new movie to the service every day, and after 30 days, it would be gone. This constantly rotating curation was exciting, and while the company still does this, Mubi has expanded quite a lot in the last few years. It has added an expansive library of films to choose from, and while it does feature stone-cold world cinema classics, its focus tends to be more on recent international cinema, a good deal of which never really received distribution in the United States at all.
Mubi is a great place to try things you may have never heard of before. For instance, one day I randomly decided to watch a Turkish film on Mubi called "Something Useful," which ended up being one of my favorite films of the 2010s. It is no longer on Mubi and cannot be found legally anywhere else, but that is the kind of thing you can get with the service if you just take a chance on something. At just $16.99 per month, it's a great deal.
Along with the service, Mubi has become its own theatrical distribution company in recent years and has done just as well in its curation there. Notably, the company has brought to theaters terrific films like Park Chan-wook's "Decision to Leave" and Léa Mysius' "The Five Devils," one of the best films of 2022.
ZEE5
Most of the international films that The Criterion Channel and Mubi offer are not of the mainstream variety. They tend to be pictures that best play in art houses. However, mainstream, populist film does not exclusively belong to Hollywood. Countries all around the world have their own mainstream film culture, and no place is that more evident than India. In this case, the country doesn't even just have one mainstream film culture but many, depending on location and language.
Mainstream Indian films — whether they be in Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, or any other language that has fostered its own film industry — have a pretty decent showing on both Netflix and Prime Video. But that doesn't mean they have everything, particularly if it is outside the Hindi-language industry. For instance, 2022's "RRR" became a sensation in the United States, but if watch it on Netflix, it will be dubbed into Hindi, even though its actual language is Telugu.
India has many different streaming services, including Eros Now, aha, and more, but if you're going to get one, it probably should be ZEE5, which is $12.99 per month. The service primarily focuses on South Indian films in Telugu and Tamil, though it does feature many different language options. ZEE5's selections include a ton of original programming, recent films like "Ghoomer" and the aforementioned "RRR" (in its original Telugu), and Indian classics like "Mughal-E-Azam." Indian film availability on streaming services is as wide-ranging as the country's cinematic output, so if ZEE5 doesn't have the programming you desire, another Indian streamer surely will.
Film Movement+
When most people see the logos for A24 or Neon before a movie, they think they are really delving into the art house, sampling the coolest and most obscure flicks out there. But for many of us movie lovers, those companies may as well be mainstream. If you really want the small, mostly international stuff, you need to go to companies like The Cinema Guild, Cohen Media Group, Grasshopper Film, and Film Movement, which is responsible for the next entry on this list.
With Film Movement+, the company looks to bring that same under-the-radar spirit to the streaming world that they do to theatrical art houses. Primarily focused on recent international cinema, this is a place to see the much smaller side of what is being shown all around the world. However, the company also features restored classic films that it has distributed as well, such as the recent restoration of the early 1990s Chinese classic "Farewell My Concubine."
At just $5.99 a month, Film Movement+ is also one of the least expensive options out there as well and can be subscribed to as its own service or as a channel on Prime Video. It may seem like a modest offering of movies you probably haven't heard of before, but that's also what makes it a surprising and worthwhile service to plunge into.
Kino Film Collection
Kino Lorber is one of the greats. For theatrical distribution, it puts out a good deal of exciting international cinema and plenty of beautiful restorations of classics. For home video distribution, it is one of the top dogs in the specialty Blu-ray market, especially with its recent explosion of 4K UHD releases of some of the best American films ever made. For a while, the company has had Kino Now, which you may think is a streaming service based on the name, but it's actually an on-demand platform for renting and purchasing digital movies. It was not until November 2023 that it finally got into the true streaming game with Kino Film Collection.
As this is still a new venture, Kino Film Collection is currently only available as a channel on Prime Video for $5.99 a month, but the options available are like catnip for a cinephile. From Kino Lorber releases like Bruno Dumont's "France" and current Oscar nominee for best documentary feature "Four Daughters" to restored classics like Bernardo Bertolucci's "The Conformist" to the works of Yorgos Lanthimos and Lina Wertmüller, Kino Film Collection has so much great cinema for such a low price that it almost feels like you are getting away with something. Personally, I would like it to be its own service separate from Prime Video, but that is a minor quibble for a endeavor that hasn't even been around for six months yet.