Product Details

• Format: NTSC
• Region: Region 1 encoding (US and Canada only)
  PLEASE NOTE: Some Region 1 DVDs may contain Regional Coding Enhancement (RCE). Some, but not all, of our international customers have had problems playing these enhanced discs on what are called "region-free" DVD players. For more information on RCE, click here.
• Studio: Sony Pictures
• DVD Release Date: December 1, 2009
• Average Customer Review: No customer reviews yet. Be the first.
• ASIN: B002WN2WB8
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #31,406 in Movies & TV (See Bestsellers in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Sony Pictures Best Foreign Language Film 8-Pack contains eight winners of the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar:

 

Indochine (1992) - Catherine Deneuve earned an Oscar nomination for this Academy Award-winning (Best Foreign Language Film, 1992) tale of passion and revolution in colonial Vietnam. Deneuve stars as Elaine Devries, the seemingly repressed owner of a prosperous rubber plantation in French Indochina. Her steely exterior, however, is only a mask intended to hide her torrid love affairs from upper-class society. But when her adopted Indochinese daughter innocently falls in love with Elaine’s secret lover, the scandalous lovers' triangle threatens to destroy their entire family. A sensual story of unbridled passion set against the violence of the bloody Communist uprising, INDOCHINE is a historically accurate, emotionally wrenching epic of love and war.

 

Burnt by the Sun (1994) - Winner of the Academy Award for Best Foreign film and the Cannes Grand Jury Prize, BURNT BY THE SUN is the unforgettable story of a Soviet hero whose happy family is suddenly targeted by Stalin's secret police. Nikita Mikhalkov directs and stars as Colonel Serguei Kotov, a hero of the Revolution who is spending the summer in the country with his young daughter (Mikhalkov's real-life daughter), his wife and her eccentric family. But when his wife's childhood love suddenly appears, the idyllic summer day takes a surprising turn. A lyrical film filled with beauty and warmth, BURNT BY THE SUN is also an indelible account of a man dedicated to family and fatherland, cruelly destroyed by political paranoia.

 

Character (1997) - Dreverhaven is dead. The city's most feared bailiff, the curse of the poor, the agent of law without compassion discovered with a knife through his heart. A self-taught lawyer who just passes his exams was the last person to see Dreverhaven alive. Now, the police want to know why he visited the old man, and the young barrister is ready to tell the story of a lifetime. Based on the popular classic 1938 Dutch novel by Ferdinand Bordewijk, this emotional powerhouse of a drama portrays a timeless struggle between father and son a struggle even the father knows the son is destined to win. Beautifully set in Rotterdam of the 1920s, this visually stunning film delivers us deep into the heart of a Dickensian world, austere and cruel yet still touchingly human. Fredja van Huêt and Jan Decleir star in writer/director Mike van Diem's Academy Award-winning feature debut.

 

All About My Mother (1999) - Internationally acclaimed writer/director Pedro Almodóvar (2003 Oscar winner, Best Screenplay, Talk to Her; Bad Education, The Flower of my Secret) delivers his finest film yet, a poignant masterpiece of unconditional love, survival and redemption.  Manuela (Cecilia Roth) is the perfect mother. A hard-working nurse, she's built a comfortable life for herself and her teenage son, an aspiring writer. But when tragedy strikes and her beloved only child are killed in a car accident, her world crumbles. The heartbroken woman learns her son's final wish was to know his father - the man she abandoned when she was pregnant 18 years earlier. Returning to Barcelona in search of him, Manuela overcomes her grief and becomes caregiver to a colorful family: a pregnant nun (Penélope Cruz), a transvestite prostitute (Antonia San Juan), and two troubled actresses (Marisa Paredes and Candela Peña). With riveting performances, unforgettable characters and creative plot twists, this touching screwball melodrama is "An absolute stunner. A funny, touching and vital film marks a career peak for Almodóvar!" - Peter Travers, ROLLING STONE

 

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) - Named "Best Picture of the Year" by over 100 critics nationwide! Two master warriors (Chow Yun Fat and Michelle Yeoh) are faced with their greatest challenge when the treasured Green Destiny sword is stolen. A young aristocrat (Zhang Ziyi) prepares for an arranged marriage, but soon reveals her superior fighting talents and her deeply romantic past. As each warrior battles for justice, they come face to face with their worst enemy - and the inescapable, enduring power of love. Set against 19th-century China's breathtaking landscape, CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON is the action-packed, box office smash from acclaimed director Ang Lee (Sense and Sensibility, The Ice Storm) featuring stunning martial arts choreography by Yuen Wo Ping (The Matrix).

 

Nowhere in Africa (2002) - Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times hails this film as being "laced with poignancy and conflict, urgency and compassion." " I loved this film!" raves Roger Ebert "this is the kind of movie that real people really, really like!" Nowhere In Africa - the critically acclaimed, Academy Award winner - is a story about love, about family, about leaving one home to create another. Spanning two continents, it's the true tale of a Jewish attorney and his family who flee the Nazi regime in 1938 for a remote farm in Kenya. As the war rages on the other side of the world, his relationships with his wife and daughter become increasingly complicated: they struggle between resisting and embracing their new life, while reaching out to each other.

 

The Lives of Others (2006) - This critically-acclaimed, Oscar-winning film (Best Foreign Language Film, 2006) is the erotic, emotionally-charged experience Lisa Schwarzbaum (Entertainment Weekly) calls "a nail-biter of a thriller!" Before the collapse of the Berlin Wall, East Germany's population was closely monitored by the State Secret Police (Stasi). Only a few citizens above suspicion, like renowned pro-Socialist playwright Georg Dreyman, were permitted to lead private lives. But when a corrupt government official falls for Georg's stunning actress-girlfriend, Christa, an ambitious Stasi policeman is ordered to bug the writer's apartment to gain incriminating evidence against the rival. Now, what the officer discovers is about to dramatically change their lives - as well as his - in this seductive political thriller Peter Travers (Rolling Stone) proclaims is "the best kind of movie: one you can't get out of your head."

 

The Counterfeiters (2007) - Winner of the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, The Counterfeiters tells the true story of Salomon Sorowitsch (Karl Markovics), a swindler who made a name for himself as Berlin's "King of the Counterfeiters." However, his life of women and easy money is cut short when he's arrested and placed in a Nazi concentration camp. With the German army on the verge of bankruptcy, Sorowitsch makes a sobering deal with his captors: in exchange for a comfortable bed, good food and fair treatment, Sorowitsch, along with the other hand-picked specialists, must counterfeit bank notes to fund the Nazi War effort. If he does as they say, he lives another day. If he rebels, he faces the same fate as the rest of the camp's prisoners. But if he lives, will he be able to live with himself?