World Cinema picks on Kanopy
Looking for something new to watch? Take a look at our top picks of World Cinema films, available to watch for free on our streaming service Kanopy!
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Sing
Based on a true story, this Oscar-winning short film follows an award-winning school choir and the new girl in class facing a tough choice: to stand up against a corrupt system, or to fit quietly into it. SING is a childhood musical drama set in 1990s post-socialist Budapest, Hungary.
Zsofi is struggling to fit in at her new school and singing in the school's famous choir is her only consolation, but the choir director may not be the inspirational teacher everyone thinks she is. It will take Zsofi and her new friend Liza to uncover the cruel truth.
La Femme et le TGV
Nominated for an Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film, La Femme et le TGV is about a lonely woman who kept a secret routine every morning and evening -- for years, she's been waving at the express train that passes by her house.
Inspired by true events and starring legendary actress Jane Birkin, Elise finds a letter from the train conductor in her garden and her lonely life is turned upside down. She engages in a promising correspondence through poetic and thoughtful letters where the two anonymous writers share their worlds with each other. But Elise’s fairytale is cut short when the train line permanently detours for a shorter route to Paris. Not willing to do without her daily delight, Elise prompts a daring escape from her comfort zone and sets out to find the train conductor.
The Mystery of Henri Pick
An editor discovers a novel that she considers to be a masterpiece, in a library whose particularity is to collect the manuscripts refused by the publishers. The text is signed Henri Pick, a Breton pizza maker who died two years earlier.
Watch The Mystery of Henri Pick →
In the Mood for Love
Hong Kong, 1962: Chow Mo-wan (Tony Leung Chiu-wai) and Su Li-zhen (Maggie Cheung Man-yuk) move into neighboring apartments on the same day. Their encounters are formal and polite—until a discovery about their spouses creates an intimate bond between them. At once delicately mannered and visually extravagant, Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood for Love is a masterful evocation of romantic longing and fleeting moments.
With its aching musical soundtrack and exquisitely abstract cinematography by Christopher Doyle and Mark Lee Ping-bin, this film has been a major stylistic influence on the past decade of cinema, and is a milestone in Wong’s redoubtable career.
Toyland
An Academy Award-winning short film set in Germany in 1942. In order to protect her son Marianne Meißner tries to make him believe that the Jewish neighbors are going on a journey to “Toyland." One morning her son has disappeared and the Jewish neighbors too.
Toyland is a film about guilt, responsibility, truth and lies.