Throughout March I played along with this Letterboxd movie challenge called March Around the World, and I got really into it! If you followed my instagram stories you saw as I posted each one I watched… The challenge was to watch 30 movies from 30 different countries in March but I ended up getting up to 38! These are everything I watched in the order that I watched them:
And below are my top 20 sorted by my rating—everything except the last two are all the movies I rated 4 stars or higher, so many great movies! (The last two were 3.5 stars but there were a lot more that I rated the same so those weren’t necessarily in my top 20.)
A requirement of the challenge was to write a review (had to be more than just a couple of sentences) for each movie watched, so I’ll share my reviews for my top five! Four of my five favorites happened to be political movies; I watched lots of movies for the challenge that didn’t have political themes but my favorites mostly happened to.
My greatest discovery of the challenge was the director Mikhail Kalatozov and my top two are a tie between the two of his I watched. His filmmaking—framing, long takes, cinematography—is incredible, in the true sense of the word, like there are shots in both of the movies that I have no idea how they were created. I love movies. Btw, my top five aren’t really ranked, just those first two by the same director and then my three other faves which could kinda be in any order.
Letter Never Sent (USSR, 1960, on Criterion Channel) — my review:
Holy moly this movie was amazing!! SO freaking beautiful, truly every frame a painting. And INTENSE! And unbelievable, like truly, how TF did they make some of those segments?! I want special features on this so bad, telling me how they made it, all the details, I’d watch hours of features/commentary/anything released about this film, but sadly nothing seems to exist. The criterion blu ray has an essay and nothing else 😦 Anyway, the story is simple, but I’d recommend this movie to everyone based on the visuals and suspense alone!
I Am Cuba (Cuba, 1964, on Kanopy and Hoopla) — my review:
Wow. Spectacular. I’ve done a bit of research about it after watching which has enhanced it (since I went in knowing nothing except that I LOVED Letter Never Sent and this was the same filmmaker), and I plan to watch some more video essays about it and then rewatch in the future. Truly amazing filmmaking, gorgeous, and beyond impressive, like baffling. The only reason I gave it 4.5 instead of 5 is that, upon first watch, I was a liiiittle bored during some segments and felt like it could’ve been a wee bit shorter, BUT, I did watch it on a night when I was a bit sleepy, and like I said I went in with no context, so I think probably on a future rewatch I’d up it to a solid 5.
The Battle of Algiers (Algeria, 1966, on Criterion Channel, Kanopy, and also Max) — my review:
A movie about a resistance movement against a western occupying force who has been oppressing an Arab population on their own land for generations and claiming it’s ridiculous for people to call them fascist because they were on the anti-nazi side in WWII. The occupiers aim to take down the leaders of the resistance movement, declaring that once those fighters are gone the resistance will be over, not realizing that with their forceful oppression they are only creating a new generation of resistance fighters who will eventually win in the end.
The atrocities committed here by the French were actually much milder than what’s being done by Israel (funded by the US) as I’m writing this. It’s distressing to think that there’s probably a sizable population who would watch this film and side with the resistance and yet believe that Israel is in the right. (I’m coming at that theory from a point of being cynical about media literacy and people connecting dots to the present, and that “sizable population” I’m imagining is made up of people who’d never watch this movie; my partner disagrees that they’d side with the resistance because racism, so who knows!)
Beans (Canada, 2020, on Hoopla and also Hulu) — my review:
Oh I LOVED this! It had me crying all throughout, but that’s partially the buildup of watching a lot of heavy movies back to back to back for March Around the World, sometimes I cry at a small thing because of the weight of everything.
But damn there were some relatable feelings in this. The feeling of experiencing (or witnessing) political violence and wanting to be way stronger and tougher and braver so you’re ready for next time, because you know there will be a next time. A twelve-year-old should not have to feel that way, but I knew exactly how she felt.
That mixed with some general coming-of-age feelings and happenings. High stakes and low stakes all mixed together. A very specific story about a very specific person in a very specific time and place, and yet completely relatable in multiple ways. Really really loved it.
Unrest (Switzerland, 2022, on Criterion Channel) — my review:
I LOVED this! I can understand that’s it’s definitely not for everyone and many (most) viewers (if forced to watch for some reason) would think it’s boring, but it ticked some rarely-ticked boxes for me personally!
1: Anarchist political history! Very interesting topic, more movies please!
2: Period setting about, like, normal people, and dealing with art & technology of the time and the part it plays in people’s lives. By normal people I mean, not royal or ultra-wealthy people, as so many period films are about, not about war, or someone famous (well except Kropotkin, but it wasn’t even really about him, and it was definitely not a biopic!). And the way we saw the novelty of this new technology / artform of photography, the collecting of portraits, and also the new tech of clocks + telegraph, so times could be synced, and what a big deal that was…
I loved all that in the same way I loved Portrait of a Lady on Fire, seeing how if a normal person (without a lot of money to go to the symphony or whatever) wanted to hear music, they had to make it themselves, and if they wanted a picture of someone, it had to be drawn or painted, and if they wanted to embroider flowers onto cloth, well they didn’t have a way to take a picture of the flowers to use for a reference point, so they had the actual flowers as the reference for the needlework. All these things, things we don’t think about, taking for granted that we can hear any kind of music any time we want, etc, I love seeing that in films, but it’s rare. That more realistic look of what things were like in a past time for people living their lives. More please!
Those were my top five but since we’re getting into issues with some of these movies I’m going to toss in my review for one more that I liked a lot…
Omar (Palestine, 2013, on Kanopy) — my review:
A complex story with twists and turns, but the fact that the Israeli military treats Palestinians like prisoners in their own home is never complex, that’s always clear. An anxious movie, good pacing, the love story aspect didn’t fully click for me, but I definitely mostly liked it and thought it was a good and interesting look at what it’s like to live in the West Bank. Of course, watching it in 2024 makes it tougher, and maybe that should say “what it WAS like” because I’d assume it would be different now.
And a quote from an interview with actor Adam Bakri, because I didn’t know that the wall divided between neighborhoods within the West Bank, not just between Israel, until I watched this movie:
People would actually think it divides Israel from the West Bank, but actually it also crosses through Palestinian towns in the West Bank, and it divides neighbors from each other. Even when I did the scene and I was standing in front of the wall, it hit me, the meaning of this huge thing that you see every day. And that they see every day in the West Bank. It almost covers the sun.
If you want to read my silly reviews of any others you can find them all on letterboxd here! Since I’m a big nerd, I made a spreadsheet of the movies I wanted to watch, and I kept adding new movies/countries throughout the month. In the end, above are all the ones that I watched in March, 38 movies/countries in 25 different languages.
One of the rules I made for myself was that every movie had to be streaming on either Kanopy or Hoopla (both free with my library card, no ads), Criterion Channel or Mubi (the two film streamers I’m currently subscribed to), or Tubi (free to everyone with ads). Limiting it like that simplified/streamlined the challenge for me a bit, and I figured would make it somewhat accessible for sharing recommendations—most people in the US should be able to get kanopy and/or hoopla with their library card, and Criterion Channel is amazing (I’m brand new to it and it’s my favorite streamer, I love it so much!!).
The 40 above are all the ones I have on my spreadsheet that I didn’t get to in March—40 more countries! So I actually changed my Letterboxd list from “March Around the World 2024” to “2024 One Movie Per Country!” and I’m gonna continue adding to it every time I watch a movie from a new country throughout the year. We’ll see how close I get to all 78 by the end of the year (or if I end up growing the spreadsheet even longer!).
As I’ve mentioned before, I highly recommend using the JustWatch site or app to check where movies are available to you, especially if you’re not in the US or if some time has passed since March 2024. Where I said something is streaming in my spreadsheet is where I plan to watch it (or did watch it), not necessarily the only spot it’s available.
I really enjoyed doing this, and definitely plan to do it again next year but maybe just 30 next time. I actually enjoyed the movie challenge so much that I immediately found another movie challenge that I’m now doing throughout April! It’s less intense—no reviews, for one thing, and most movies don’t have subtitles and many of them are a bit sillier, like less attention required, so it’s just a fun way to watch some things that have been in my to-watch list for years, and/or that I wouldn’t normally watch.
Most of the movies I plan to watch for this challenge are in the grid above, and all the ones I’ve watched are here. I get to watch another by Mikhail Kalatozov for this challenge (yay!) plus there’s a little overlap with countries I haven’t done yet (Belgium, Turkey, Rwanda). If you’re interested, it’s the Letterboxd Season Challenge which runs from September through early-May every year, but I’m cramming it all in now since I only just learned about it! Later this year, I can start the next one on time and it’ll be a chill, slow-paced one-movie-per-week challenge as it’s designed to be. In conclusion, yay movies!
Lee Does Stuff 