Languages with large film libraries? Your favorite?

Which of the languages supported by Lingq (besides English) have the largest number of films readily available online? Which countries/languages have the largest libraries of films and the most active film industries? This could influence my choice of an additional language.

Secondly, what is your favorite film in your target language?

I’ll nominate Russian for consideration. There is a huge library of Russian films from the Soviet era. The quality varies, and there are obvious formulas, but there are plenty high quality and entertaining films. The industry is still active (though the masses like their Hollywood blockbusters), and there are several outstanding post-Soviet films.

https://www.youtube.com/user/LenfilmVideo

It’s hard to choose a favorite. “Особенности Национальной Охоты” would have to be near the top. It’s a comedy that I like as much for its characters as for the situations they get themselves into. Thanks, Evgueny, for the suggestion. Peculiarities of the National Hunt - Wikipedia

A couple of others that come to mind don’t really fit my questions because I watched them dubbed or subtitled into Russian: the Serbian comedy “Zavet” (Promise Me This) and German tragicomedy “Good Bye, Lenin!”. Promise Me This - Wikipedia Good Bye, Lenin! - Wikipedia!

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Spanish, would have to be the second largest, I’m guessing, due to multiple countries, and widely available content in the US.

And France always had a consistently good and relatively high volume of cinematic output.

I think those two languages probably have the most titles available on Netflix. Especially if you add the available dubbed content.

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In terms of French, my favorite film is hands down Cyrano de Bergerac (1990 version). Cyrano is of course based on a play and it has many Shakespearean themes, tropes or however you want to call it. The film mixes drama, tragedy and comedy in an almost osmotic way. I generally don’t like comedies and I would not call it a comedy first and foremost but it is one movie that I probably have laughed the most watching it.

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Don’t like comedies? 0.o I think for learners they have value in that insofar as much comedy has a visual element, which can entertain and maintain interest even when the speech is beyond grasp. In the beginning I watched a lot of films in which I couldn’t understand much that was spoken, but found them entertaining anyway, and the language exposure was useful. I actually prefer comedies in which much of the effect is from unique and interesting characters, but a film, comedy or otherwise, in which most of the interest is conveyed through dialogue alone will be more opaque and therefore less useful to beginner and intermediate learners. Anyway, I’ll have to see if I can find Cyrano de Bergerac dubbed in Russian. Thanks!

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Japanese
Kimi no na wa
Love Exposure
Tampopo (should be Tanpopo)
Perfect Blue
Tokyo Godfathers
Grave of the fireflies
My neighbours the Yamada
Tale of Princess Kaguya
I want to eat your pancreas
Wisper of the heart
Kagemusha
The 7 samurais

Mandarin
The Wedding Banquet
Eat Drink Man Woman
More Mandarin movies here https://www.imdb.com/list/ls042966561/

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I would have said Spanish, French as well as Japanese, especially if animated films are ok, too.

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France - arguably the most successful country after the US historically in filmmaking.

  • My 9-10s: Les Demoiselles de Rochefort, Les Parapluies de Cherbourg, Le Samourai, Les Quatre Cents Coups, Le Beau Mariage, Le Rayon Vert++

Japan - same with French, plenty of really good films from 1920s all the way until recent day

  • Some favorites: Midareru, Ugetsu, Sansho the Bailiff, Tokyo Story

China - obviously plenty of Cantonese films from Hong Kong from the '80s and on. Mainland China’s movie industry is building up fast too

Italy - historically many good films, but probably not as successful nowadays

South Korea - Pretty busy movie (and entertainment in general) industry

Russia - Historically plenty of good films, especially from USSR times as mentioned. Maybe not as active nowadays

Iran - Somewhat busy movie industry with many good films

India - Tons of bollywood stuff. Not my favorite generally speaking, but there are some really good classic Indian films (Satyajit Ray)

Of these, the French and Japanese films are generally my favorites - still need to learn Japanese tho, maybe one day. I also need to watch more Chinese films for sure, plenty of good films here

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I’m starting to collect native German movies.
Besides mentioned “Good Bye, Lenin! 2003” I would note “Lola, rennt 1998” and “Lammbock German 2001”.
Those are maybe not the best movies that German culture gave birth to., but they’re certainly good.
I’m sure there must be a whole layer of cool GDR and FRG movies.

Dear German friends, please name titles that you like or could recommend.

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after english (american/british/australian ) film industries
i would say the french and spanish although i still believe the ones from spain are still a better quality than latin america

I am not so sure how good this website/service is from a language learning point of view (except for english learners) but as per my understanding they have both classics and avant garde films. The way it works is that every month you get 30 movies at a price of 9,99 $. I assume that there are going to be “international films” as well.

https://mubi.com/

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I think Spanish are the second largest and French the third. Speaking of mine native language, Portuguese, we don’t have so great movies, but there are a few you may know, like “Cidade de Deus” (en: City of God) and “Central do Brasil” (en: Central Station, this one was indicated for oscar). I really enjoy another ones like “O Auto da Compadecida” (en: A Dog’s Will - the title’s translation is very different from original) and “O Homem que copiava” (en: The Man Who Copied).

Just on a side note, in my opinion, the country with the most oddly inconsistent film output would have to be Germany. Now, of course we can all name some GREAT german films from the past decades: Das Boot, Lives of Others, Run Lola Run, Goodbye Lenin, etc. but the problem is, in between those great films Germany doesn’t seem to have a consistent output of solid mid level films like France and Spain does – despite the fact that Germany is one of the most populous counties in Europe. (Even the makers of those great films mentioned have a hard time following up within Germany – Das Boot’s Wolfgang Petersen went Hollywood right after that film, and the director of Lives of Others took years to pop up again with a decent but not great Don’t Look Away.*)

I think this overall inconsistency is a lingering result of a cultural loss suffered during the “unpleasant times” of the 1930’s and 40’s as well as the years of separation after the war and the imposed a cultural stifling on the east side of the wall.

Most of Germany’s output over the past decade seems to be concentrated on a fun, but somewhat odd obsession with TV police procedurals – Tatort being the flagship, followed by a fleet of others. I think per capita Germany has by far the largest number of crime shows on air, despite having a very low crime rate. (I read a statistic that last year, the entire Berlin police force fired only 11 shots in the line of duty, and most of those were on animals.) And again the quality of the TV output is very inconsistent. Babylon Berlin, and Generation War stand out as two great series – but Dogs of Berlin is a mess, and Tatort, which can be a fun experience at first, gets very old with its logical inconsistencies.

Again these are just observations from a German speaker who loves watching good german films and TV, and will continue to seek them out whenever possible.

(*Yes, I know, he did The Tourist, but it’s an abomination that should be forgotten and stricken from the record of anyone involved, except for Johnny Depp, who should forever be held responsible in the court of cinema for that atrocity. )

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Germany were very prolific in movie making during the 1920s though, but from a language-learning perspective there’s limited utility from those. You may also want to explore the 70s and 80s as there should be some good German films from those decades (Berlin Alexanderplatz, any Fassbinder/Wenders/Herzog, Mephisto etc). This list: Kinemathekverbund's The 100 Most Important German Films - iCheckMovies.com should have some good ones.

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I loved Generation War (Unsere Mütter, Unsere Väter), it’s a shame they took it off of Netflix.
Besides that, I’m not sure about how many quality German films there are since I have yet to watch many, but I know there are some from the BRD such as “Isola Bella” and “Schick deine
Frau nicht nach Italien”.

For Russian, I really love Soviet movies, such as
Девчата
Бриллиантовая рука
Кавказская пленница
Операция «Ы» и другие приключения Шурика
12 стульев
Иван Васильевич меняет профессию
Любовь и голуби

It’s really nice when they have subtitles in the target language, but for “Любовь и голуби” for example I couldn’t find any Russian subtitles initially, so I had to use the only helpful non-English option - Bulgarian - even though I don’t know a word of Bulgarian.

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I agree that visual comedy can be helpful. I’m thankful to Юрий Никулин for not only being an actor, but also a clown, which was helpful when watching the movies he’s in.

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I recently started learning French. maybe someone will be useful " voirfilm"