by Nathaniel R
In lieu of the traditional box office charts for the holiday weekend, it's time to marvel yet again at how leggy Parasite (2019) continues to be. After its Oscar win a week ago it doubled its screen count and is expected to take in over $5 million this weekend once the actual money has been counted. So let's take a look at the very biggest international hits since box office stats began to be a commonly reported thing. Which foreign films were the all time biggest hits (since the late 80s)? For clarity we're talking about films that weren't in English but also weren't from the US which removes Mel Gibson's weird dead language projects like Passion of the Christ and Apocalypto, Clint Eastwood's Iwo Jima, and the recent Lulu Wang hit The Farewell among a few others.
THE 25 HIGHEST-GROSSING INTERNATIONAL
FOREIGN-LANGUAGE FILMS
IN DOMESTIC RELEASE (1987-2019)
01 Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (Taiwan, 2000) $128
10 Oscar nominations including Best Picture. 4 wins. There will never be another subtitled hit as big as this one but what a glorious film to find up top.
02 Life is Beautiful (Italy, 1998) $57.2
7 Oscar nominations including Best Picture. 3 wins including Best Actor. And yes we still resent it for stealing Sir Ian McKellen's Oscar.
03 Hero (China, 2002) $53.7
1 Oscar nomination. It's the highest grossing foreign language film that didn't win Best Foreign-Language Film at the Oscars. It was defeated by Germany's Nowhere in Africa which made a still formidable $6.1 in stateside release.)
04 🔺 Parasite (South Korea, 2019) $53+
6 Oscar nominations. 4 wins including Best Picture which was a first for a foreign film. We've discussed this grand movie a lot.
05 Pan's Labyrinth (Mexico, 2006) $37.6
6 Oscar nominations. 3 wins -- it holds the record of the most Oscars ever won by a foreign language film that did NOT win Best Foreign Film (the prize that year went to Germany's The Lives of Others)
06 Amelie (France, 2001) $33.2
5 Oscar nominations, no wins. It shares the record of being the most nominated foreign film to win zero Oscars with France's Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) and Sweden's The Emigrants (1971). Those earlier pictures suffered the same exact fate though they did it in two separate Oscar ceremonies --for an explanation see the write-up down at #22.
07 Il Postino (Italy, 1995) $21.8
5 Oscar nominations including Best Picture. 1 win. (Not submitted for Best Foreign Language Film)
08 Baahubali 2 The Conclusion (India, 2017) $20.1
(Not submitted for Best Foreign Language Film)
09 Kung Fu Hustle (Hong Kong, 2005) $17.1
(not submitted for best foreign film)
10 The Motorcycle Diaries (Brazil, 2004) $16.7
2 Oscar nominations. 1 win (Not submitted for Best Foreign Language Film)
11 Y Tu Mama Tambien (Mexico, 2002) $13.8
1 Oscar nomination (Not submitted for Best Foreign Language Film)
12 Volver (Spain, 2006) $12.8
1 Oscar nomination though it was not nominated for Best Foreign Language Film. We will never get over this horrific snub as it should have won the category. Unfortunately US critics and the Oscars were in a kind of taking-Pedro-for-granted coma when Volver surfaced since he was coming off the best run of four consecutive classics to rival any director's throughout any decade of film history. At least the acting branch responded!
13 Dangal (India, 2012) $12.3
(Not submitted for Best Foreign Language Film)
14 Cinema Paradiso (Italy, 1989) $11.9
1 Oscar nomination and win. The only thing I remember about this love-letter to movies was that insanely great censored-footage kissing montage. Does this movie hold up? Have any of you seen it recently?
15 Padmavaat $11.8 (India, 2018) $11.8
(Not submitted for Best foreign language Film)
16 The Lives of Others (Germany, 2006) $11.2
1 Oscar nomination and win.
17 House of Flying Daggers (China, 2004) $11.0
1 Oscar nomination. (Not nominated for Best Foreign Language Film). It's the second of two Zhang Yimou films on this list after Hero. In both cases you can see the after effects of Crouching Tiger's seismic popularity. For a few years after that Ang Lee blockbuster Americas were into wuxia films. But all trends eventually end.
18. La Vie En Rose (France, 2007) $10.3
(Nominated for 3 Oscars, won 1. It was not submitted for Foreign-Language Film). Propelled financially in large part by Marion Cotillard's beloved Oscar-winning performance. France submitted the animated film Persepolis instead which also was a hit at arthouses with a $4+ million gross.
19 Intouchables (France, 2011) $10.1
Remember when this international blockbuster got stiffed by the Oscars? In earlier decades before the rule changes it might have won but the executive committee and the expanded interest in the category has really upped their game in terms of quality. It was recently remade in English as The Upside which grossed over $100 in the US. But the original French film had the last laugh as it grossed over $400 million globally.
20 Talk to Her (Spain, 2002) $9.3
2 Oscar nominations. 1 win for Best Original Screenplay. It was not submitted for Best Foreign Language Film, Spain choosing Mondays in the Sun, instead which did not receive a nomination. But Spain neglecting Talk to Her actually increased its chances in the other categories we think.
21 The Barbarian Invasions (Canada, 2003)
2 Oscar nominations. 1 win.
22 All About My Mother (Spain, 1999) $8.3
1 Oscar nomination and win. Sadly this is Almodóvar's only Oscar win within the Best Foreign Language Film category. It always feels like he's had more nominations than he's actually had (given the general popularity of his films) but Volver and Talk to Her -- his two biggest hits stateside -- were not nominated in the category. Only three of his films have competed in the category: Women on the Verge, All About My Mother, and Pain and Glory this past season.
23 Sanju (India, 2018) $7.9
(Not submitted for Best Foreign Language Film)
24 City of God (Brazil, 2003) $7.5
4 Oscar nominations. (Not nominated for Best Foreign Language Film). This Brazilian hit from Fernandos Meirelles (The Two Popes) is a great bookend to Hero (up at #3) because together they demonstrate an Oscar rule that a lot of people still don't understand about the Best International Feature category. If you are submitted for competition in an Oscar year without a US theatrical release (as Hero and City of God both were in 2002) and then you are given an actual theatrical release the following year in the US (as Hero and City of God both were in 2003) then you are only eligible at the Oscars in that release year IF YOU WERE NOT NOMINATED IN FOREIGN FILM. That's why City of God was able to clean up with surprise high profile nominations in 2003 but Hero couldn't even land Best Cinematography and Best Costume Design citations (as it surely would have if eligible after becoming so popular with moviegoers).
(This rule was not always in place. You can find examples from previous decades where a film was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film in one year only to receive other category Oscar nominations the following year once it was released.)
25 Run Lola Run (Germany, 1998) $7.2
Germany submitted this stylish flick for the Oscars (which promptly ignored it -- too crazy and the people who loved it best were young audiences -- but it didn't arrive in movie theaters in the US until the summer of 1999 when it proved an arthouse smash. (And yes Alias promptly ripped off Lola's look in its initial promos in 2001.)
25 Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (Spain, 1988) $7.2
1 Oscar nomination. Pedro Almodóvar has more hits on this chart than anyone (with 4). Women on the Verge... is the film that made him famous all over the world.
runner up
25 A Separation (Iran, 2011) $7.0
2 Oscar nominations. 1 win. Nice to end this list which was prompted by a masterpiece (Parasite) with another bonafide masterpiece.
Note 1: Titles from the 1980s and early 90s would definitely rank more highly if you adjusted for inflation and some titles that aren't even listed above would probably surface if you did. That surely must be true of hits like Akira Kurosawa's Ran (pictured, left), Denmark's Babette's Feast, or France's Indochine.
Note 2: The 25 films above were all VERY big hits as imported films go. A lot of high profile subtitled hits top out between 3-7 million dollars even if they're audience and Academy favourites (like Three Colors: Red, Amour, Ida, or Cold War). That's easy money for Hollywood pictures but still a sign of a significant hit at the arthouse.
Note 3: This list is as complete as we could make it but it's possible we're missing a few titles since that was not an easy list to compile since there's not a single source to collect the information anymore.