Nowadays, thanks to globalisation and the development of streaming services, foreign pop culture is occupying the world. In terms of music and TV, K-pop and Squid Game have taken the world by storm in recent years, not to mention the greatest-of-all-time games came from Japan, including names such as Zelda, Mario, and Elden Ring. However, in the film industry, it seems to be a completely different story. But why? The journey of foreign language films that try to break through into mainstream American/British pop culture will be too difficult to fully cover in one article. Here, I will break it into two parts: awards and commercial performance.
We all know that among the 95 occasions where the Academy Award for Best Picture was given out, there was only one time when it went to a foreign language film: Parasite. There have been many films very close to that golden man, but due to various reasons, they didn’t win. Most recently, Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma had won the BAFTA, the Critics’ Choice, and the Golden Globe. But, on Oscars night, it still didn’t win Best Picture. Even if we look at other categories such as Best Director, Alfonso Cuarón and Bong Joon-ho are the only two who managed to win with a foreign language film.
On the other hand, the BAFTAs seems to have less problem in recognising foreign language films. In 1949, when Best Film was called Best Film From Any Source, BAFTA awarded Bicycle Thieves with its highest honour. It was only its 3rd ceremony. Thereafter, foreign language films that managed to achieve that include La Ronde (1951), Forbidden Games (1953), The Wages of Fear (1954), Gervaise (1956), Ballad of a Soldier (1961), Day for Night (1973), Lacombe, Lucien (1974), Jean de Florette (1987), Roma (2018), and All Quiet on the Western Front (2022).
In terms of box office, only four foreign language films have earned over 5 million pounds at the UK box office: Parasite, The Passion of the Christ, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and Amélie. It’s similar in the US that only Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon earned more than 100 million dollars. You can hardly say that they truly broke through into mainstream culture and made a difference in terms of popularising other foreign language films .
However, the result will be more interesting if you extend the scope to English-speaking films directed by directors coming from a non-English speaking country. Among the Best Picture winners, Nomadland by Chloé Zhao, The Shape of Water by Guillermo del Toro, Birdman by Alejandro G. Iñárritu, and The Last Emperor by Bernardo Bertolucci are all examples of such films. In the case of The Last Emperor, even the majority of the cast and crews came from non-English speaking countries. Still, it is mainly in English.
From the directors mentioned above, most of them also work in Hollywood, with bigger commercial success. Ang Lee’s Life of Pi, Chloé Zhao’s Eternals, Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim, and Alfonso Cuarón’s Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban are just a few examples of the gifts foreign directors have given to Hollywood. And I think it’s safe to argue that these films are a part of the ‘mainstream culture’.
From my point of view, I think there is very little hope for foreign language films to actually break through. It has nothing to do with the talents of individuals. It is more about the industry. For now, America may be the only country that has a mature industry. Hollywood is able to make films that could resonate with audiences from different cultural backgrounds because they have the biggest budget and usually deliver universal values. Even though China and India also have growing film industries, their films can hardly attract audiences across their borders and reach a global market. This may also explain the big win for Parasite: class conflict and social inequality are problems without borders.
“cinema” by SparkCBC is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.