Seven Foreign Films to Look Forward to in August

Looking through the August film release calendar, I realized that though there is only one film I care about from the major Hollywood studios (Universal’s Scott Pilgrim vs. the World), there is an abundance of award-winning foreign films getting released in the late-summer lull. These seven films hail from six different countries: Israel, Japan, the UK, Australia, Germany and Peru and all have done well on the festival circuit. August would be a good month to skip the multiplex and all the expendable movies showing within and opt instead for an art-house theater that’s not scared of subtitles. Here are seven foreign films opening in August that look worth your while.

1. Lebanon
Release Date: Aug. 6
Country: Israel
Director: Samuel Maoz
Starring: Reymond Amsalem, Ashraf Barhom, Oshri Cohen
Studio: Sony Pictures Classics

Based on a true story of a reluctant tank gunner in The First Lebanon War in 1982, Samuel Moaz’ first dramatic film looks like a different kind of war movie, winning a Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival.

2. Tales From Earthsea
Country: Japan
Release Date: Aug. 13
Director: Goro Miyazaki
Starring: Reymond Amsalem, Ashraf Barhom, Oshri Cohen
Studio: Walt Disney

Released in 2006 throughout the rest of the world, Disney had to wait until SyFy’s screenrights to the original Ursula K. Le Guin novels expired in the U.S. to show the animated film from the son of Japan’s legendary animator Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away, Ponyo) here. The dark tale about dragons and wizards was well received abroad.

3. Centurion
Country: UK
Director: Neil Marshall
Starring: Michael Fassbender, Dominic West, Olga Kurylenko
Studio: Magnet Releasing

Roman soldiers weren’t often the underdogs, but this story of seven survivors among 3,000 massacred by the Picts muddies the waters between heroes and villains. Neil Marshall already showed that he could make an artful horror film with The Descent and tries to do the same with the ancient-warrior genre.

4. Animal Kingdom
Country: Australia
Release Date: Aug. 13
Director: David Michôd
Starring: Ben Mendelsohn, Joel Edgerton, Guy Pearce, Luke Ford
Studio: Sony Pictures Classics

This story of a young man caught between a criminal gang and a police detective is confident enough to use Air Supply in its trailer to surprisingly good effect. It won the Grand Jury Prize for World Cinema at Sundance 2010.

5. Mao’s Last Dancer
Country: Australia
Release Date: Aug. 13
Director: Bruce Beresford
Starring: Chi Cao, Bruce Greenwood, Kyle MacLachlan, Joan Chen, Amanda Schull
Studio:

Bruce Beresford is best known as the director of Tender Mercies and Driving Miss Daisy. Here, he tells the true story of a Chinese dancer Li Cunxin (Chi Cao) taken from his home to study ballet as a boy and his defection to the U.S. The film is an adaptation of Li’s best-selling autobiography.

6. Soul Kitchen
Release Date: Aug. 20
Country: Germany
Director: Fatih Akin
Starring: Adam Bousdoukos, Moritz Bleibtreu, Birol Ünel
Studio: IFC Films

As the name implies this comedy revolves around food, particularly the food served in a Greek restaurant in Hamburg. Fatih Akin’s (The Edge of Heaven, Head-On) latest film won a Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival.

7. The Milk of Sorrow
Country: Peru
Release Date: Aug. 27
Director: Claudia Llosa
Starring: Magaly Solier, Susi Sánchez, Efrain Solís
Studio: Olive Films

The Milk of Sorrow got an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Film earlier this year and won a Golden Berlin Bear, but it’s just now getting a U.S. release. The movie follows a young woman diagnosed with the “milk of sorrow,” sadness and fear which passes down from a mother who was raped.