\n<\/p>\n
This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.<\/p>\n
Welcome back to The Daily\u2019s Sunday culture edition.<\/p>\n
This week, we asked The Atlantic\u2019s writers and editors: What is a foreign film you\u2019d recommend to somebody who hasn\u2019t seen one before? Their picks\u2014which follow an Argentinian lawyer\u2019s life-changing case, two lovers in a French seaside town, and more\u2014show that the boundaries of language don\u2019t impede the thrill of a good story.<\/p>\n
Argentina, 1985 (streaming on Prime Video)<\/p>\n
If you tend to sit out non-American films, consider making an exception for Argentina, 1985. The courtroom drama is based on the true story of the trials of military-junta leaders who seized control of Argentina for more than seven years. Under their rule, thousands of leftists (and suspected leftists) disappeared. Many of the pregnant women who were taken to secret detention centers were killed after giving birth so that military couples could adopt the infants. The film starts almost two years after the dictatorship ended in 1983: Julio C\u00e9sar Strassera, a Buenos Aires lawyer\u2014big mustache, big glasses, nice suit\u2014is tasked with taking the juntas\u2019 leaders to court so that his newly democratic nation can confront its past and heal its wounds. This is an honor, but a daunting one; Strassera doesn\u2019t want to do it.<\/p>\n
Thankfully, for history and for the film\u2019s plot, he eventually acquiesces. But just because everyone knows that terror and torture were the military\u2019s favorite instruments doesn\u2019t mean that this would be easy to prove in court. Strassera assembled a scrappy young team that traveled to remote corners of the country in search of evidence and testimonies. This was, after all, the first major war-crime trial since Nuremberg. But the historical importance of the subject matter is not the only reason this film is worth watching. It should also be appreciated\u2014like any movie, foreign or not\u2014for its exceptional storytelling and the vividness of its characters.<\/p>\n
\u2014 Gisela Salim-Peyer, associate editor<\/p>\n
***<\/p>\n
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (streaming on HBO Max)<\/p>\n
\u201cOnce you overcome the one-inch tall barrier of subtitles, you will be introduced to so many more amazing films,\u201d said the South Korean filmmaker Bong Joon Ho upon accepting one of his four Oscars for Parasite in 2020. That movie, the first foreign-language film to win Best Picture, would be a solid entry point for any budding cineast looking to move beyond English-language filmmaking, but if that seems too obvious, go a little further back in time. Jacques Demy\u2019s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, a French musical from 1964, follows two star-crossed young lovers in a French seaside town; the gorgeous swoon of its visuals is balanced out by the melancholy of its narrative. If you like that, you can broaden out to other French films from that era\u2014such as Fran\u00e7ois Truffaut\u2019s The 400 Blows or Alain Resnais\u2019 Hiroshima Mon Amour.<\/p>\n
\u2014 David Sims, staff writer<\/p>\n
***<\/p>\n
Burnt by the Sun (available to rent on Prime Video and YouTube)<\/p>\n
I admit, I\u2019m not a high-culture, foreign-film kind of guy. (The last movie I saw in a theater was the new Superman.) But as someone who spent a career studying the Soviet Union and Russia, I do have one recommendation that is both a moving film and an artifact of two moments in history.<\/p>\n
In 1994, the Russian director Nikita Mikhalkov released Burnt by the Sun, a quiet, haunting study of love and betrayal during one summer day in 1936, when Joseph Stalin\u2019s purges of political dissidents and enemies were closing in on a Russian family. The father is a Soviet general named Kotov, played by Mikhalkov himself, whose life collapses around him when a man from his wife\u2019s past arrives. The beauty of a summer day is overshadowed by dread, soon followed by black despair.<\/p>\n
Mikhalkov captured both the \u201930s and the new freedom of Russia in the \u201990s in a single movie, but he apparently learned nothing from his own work: He later became a Russian nationalist, a loyal ally of President Vladimir Putin, and a supporter of the invasion of Ukraine. To watch Burnt by the Sun, the viewer must separate the artist from the art, but it is sad to realize how much Mikhalkov, too, separated himself from his creation.<\/p>\n
\u2014 Tom Nichols, staff writer<\/p>\n
***<\/p>\n
Shadow (\u5f71) (streaming on Hulu, Tubi, and Prime Video)<\/p>\n
Zhang Yimou\u2019s early wuxia masterpiece, Hero (\u82f1\u96c4), is a titan of the genre, but I\u2019ll take any opportunity to rhapsodize about his 2018 film, Shadow (\u5f71). Set during China\u2019s Three Kingdoms period, the martial-arts drama takes its time in establishing its players and stakes, but non\u2013Mandarin speakers need not fear: The film is meant to be experienced as a tone poem, and its central preoccupations\u2014the slipperiness of identity, the dialogue between yin and yang\u2014come through in its visual grammar. Zhang was reportedly inspired by traditional Chinese ink-wash painting, and the film plays with blacks and whites and grays, with water, and, yes, with shadow. It\u2019s an instructive departure from the fast cuts, frenetic pacing, and shaky cam of Hollywood blockbusters: Shadow unfurls like a stroke of calligraphy, elegant and deliberate. Much of the soundtrack is diegetic\u2014zither, flute, rainfall\u2014and its astonishing action sequences are as inexorable as the tides. By the genuinely shocking denouement (which made a little old lady in my theater gasp, \u201cOh my!\u201d), you are wrung out by beauty and slaughter\u2014but also elated, euphoric. It\u2019s a showcase by an auteur in full command of his powers, and unlike anything that\u2019s being made in the West. Watch it on the biggest screen you can.<\/p>\n
\u2014 Rina Li, copy editor<\/p>\n
***<\/p>\n
The Taste of Things (streaming on Hulu and Disney+)<\/p>\n
These days, movies and shows about cooking tend to be vertiginous and stress-inducing. (Think: the high-velocity cursing in The Bear, or Gordon Ramsay screaming on Hell\u2019s Kitchen, \u201cMy gran could do better! And she\u2019s dead!\u201d) The Taste of Things, a French movie by the director Tran Anh Hung, feels like an antidote to all of the anxious kitchen hubbub. Set in the French countryside in 1889, the film focuses on a cook named Eug\u00e9nie and her boss, Dodin, longtime lovers who bond over their shared affection for food. The slow-paced, reverential cooking scenes are bathed in a golden glow. They boil and dry cabbages; they braise stingrays in milk. Years after watching this movie, I still think about one shot of a pear on a plate, which cuts to a parallel image of Eug\u00e9nie\u2019s sweaty, naked backside on a bed. Through Hung\u2019s lens, both flesh and food are depicted as the Earth\u2019s decadent, temporary bounty. When I left the theater, I remember wandering into my local grocery store in a daze, suddenly aware of how miraculous each swollen radish and bulbous pear appeared.<\/p>\n
\u2014 Valerie Trapp, assistant editor<\/p>\n
\nHere are three Sunday reads from The Atlantic:<\/strong><\/p>\n The Week Ahead<\/strong><\/p>\n Essay<\/strong><\/p>\n Sela Shiloni for The Atlantic<\/p>\n The Director Who Fell in Love With Losers<\/p>\n By David Sims<\/p>\n The Upper West Side deli where I meet Benny Safdie is filled with a particular kind of grumpy old-school Manhattanite. They\u2019re the type of figure who has tended to populate the filmmaker\u2019s movies: many of them neurotic, and more concerned with finding a means to their own ends than placating the people around them. With his brother, Josh, Benny has built a career on his fascination with these occasionally surly characters, often men on the downswing. For his first solo directing effort, The Smashing Machine, Safdie focuses on a somewhat unexpected figure: a sports champion, albeit one who is learning what it\u2019s like to fail. \u201cI want to know what it feels like to go through that,\u201d he told me, over a plate of eggs, discussing the film. It\u2019s an uncomfortable portrait\u2014of who the winner becomes when he starts to lose.<\/p>\n Read the full article.<\/p>\n More in Culture<\/p>\n Catch Up on The Atlantic <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Photo Album<\/p>\n People on Stardust Racers experience more than 4 g\u2019s of force, a level at which the human heart struggles to pump blood. (Sinna Nasseri for The Atlantic)<\/p>\n These photos show the very expensive, extremely overwhelming, engineered fun of theme parks.<\/p>\n Rafaela Jinich contributed to this newsletter.<\/p>\n Play our daily crossword.<\/em><\/p>\n Explore all of our newsletters.<\/em><\/p>\n When you buy a book using a link in this newsletter, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting <\/em>The Atlantic.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. Welcome back to The Daily\u2019s Sunday culture edition. This week, we asked The Atlantic\u2019s writers and editors: What is<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27574,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[1671,16447,11162,5094],"class_list":{"0":"post-27573","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-social-issues","8":"tag-atlantic","9":"tag-foreignfilm","10":"tag-pack","11":"tag-starter"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27573"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27573\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/27574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n