[hiisukun]

I would love a way to regularly discover and watch some top, 'hit' TV shows or movies from outside of America or Australia (my home country), or sometimes England. I have no issues watching things with subtitles, but it is quite difficult to organically find things to watch, that perhaps have 'not English' as their primary language.

For example, I will now look up the UFO Sweden show to see if I might like to watch it -- because I discovered it through here.

I have tried subscribing to a few different regular streaming services, but none seemed to work even if I pointed them in the right direction. I'm really not particular about which country of origin the production has, so long as it's "the best" or "very popular" in recent times from that place, it's worth me checking the genre and style to see if it piques my interest.

Any advice on this? [ nb. I have a similar issue with podcasts! ]

[cess11]

You might enjoy https://easterneuropeanmovies.com/, https://sovietmoviesonline.com/ or https://asian-movies-online.com/. They have both movies that are popular hits and that have been important to the craft and history of the art. Subtitles are usually from open sub-style sources so not professional quality, but I find it sometimes help with learning the language when it's more literally translated than idiomatically.

[bdhcuidbebe]

Sovietmoviesonline, eh?

Got any soviet movie recommendations that isnt straight up propaganda material? Did they even produce non propaganda?

[cess11]

What's wrong with propaganda? Is that a reason why you haven't seen for example Apocalypse Now?

You might want to watch Andrei Rublev, at its inception a controversial movie heavily disliked by the Soviet state:

https://sovietmoviesonline.com/drama/andrey-rublev

Edit: And then the post-soviet Fairy, which ruminates on the legacy of Tarkovsky's masterpiece.

https://sovietmoviesonline.com/fantastic/fairy

The rest of Melikyan's movies are also quite interesting and fun.

They also distribute post-Soviet russian movies and television series. You should watch the two takes on The Master and Margarita, both high profile projects based off one of the most beloved books in Russia, from two very different times in russian society:

https://sovietmoviesonline.com/drama/master-i-margarita-mini...

https://sovietmoviesonline.com/melodrama/the-master-and-marg...

The Soviet was especially good a adventures for kids and science-fiction, of which you'll find a lot there, for example Alice in Wonderland and Hard to be a God. You should watch the takes on the latter to get a feel for differences between soviet and post-soviet societies. If the younger version feels hard to watch you might need to watch The Green Elephant and other movies from the russian nineties to prepare yourself and better understand the feelings and mindset of the time.

And if you want you can watch old propaganda movies about the Donbass or whatever, you'll learn a lot about places you likely know very little about.

[bdhcuidbebe]

> What's wrong with propaganda?

Really? What makes you even type that out.

[jajko]

Movies done behind iron curtain, despite (and sometimes thanks to) everpresent censorship and oversight ended up with pretty deep existential messages that avoided usually not that brilliant censors.

Bear in mind that most artists abhored oppression even in toughest times, they are all free spirits after all, and I can imagine also in current russia there must be at least large pockets of similar folks.

Of course there were more shallow mainstream things more or less full of propaganda, and many actors overlapped between 2 categories. If one was clearly in critical camp then no work in industry, either some menial soul breaking job, prison or kicking out

[dpig_]

I'm learning a language, and I'd love to be able to filter Netflix titles by language, but they absolutely refuse to do it (I assume because allowing users to filter content would expose how bare the offerings are).

[intothemild]

Netflix, and other streaming is absolutely the worst at stuff like this.

Another thing is Subtitles in every language. They ONLY show subs in a handful of languages, even though the subs are in every language. For instance, I live in Norway, it's common to see subs in only Norwegian, which makes sense. But imagine you're a tourist/immigrant, etc. Maybe you want to watch this Japanese movie, well, now the audio is in Japanese, and the Subs are in Norwegian.

The app knows your language preference... but shows the subs for the country you're in. Even though Netflix/etc has the rights to the streaming.

It's baffling to me, and I must be missing a piece of the puzzle. But I'm forced as someone who's still learning Norwegian, to skip all Non-English media, OR pirate them so that I can get subs in whatever language I choose. (Yet another example of how piracy is the better UX)