We love to watch shows where the dialog is not in English, but that have English subtitles.  Perhaps we enjoy foreign language movies and series as it requires a more intense level of engagement to watch them.   I know we enjoy falling into the cadence and tone of the different languages and seeing the differences in scenery, customs, laws, and social norms.

This started even before we were married.  While Carrie Lynn and I were  dating and sharing movies we were passionate about, we watched the 1942 black and white Jean Cocteau version of “Beauty and the Beast”.  In French with (really poor) English subtitles, it remains one of our favorite movies.

Then in the year after we were married, we saw the newly released German language film, “Run Lola Run” at the Nuart theater in Santa Monica California.  It too, is a movie we can watch multiple times.

Now a couple of decades later, streaming has given us access to a huge variety of foreign films and TV series just waiting to be binged.  Having lived in Sweden for a while, we were initially drawn to Swedish series and films due to their familiarity.  That familiar feeling and sound of the language then extended to shows from the other Scandinavian countries.

If you would like to give this a try, here is a list of movies and series we have watched and enjoyed.  We lean pretty hard toward crime drama and Sci-fi.  And you can see from the list that we are only starting to reach beyond Scandinavia and Europe, so we have many more countries and languages yet to explore.
Movies:
(Title/Languages)
In Order of Their Disappearance/Norwegian, Serbian
Let The Right One In/Swedish
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo/Swedish
The Girl Who Played with Fire/Swedish
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest/Swedish
RRR/Telugu
Blasted/Norwegian
The Darkest Hour/Russian
Day Watch/Russian
Night Watch/Russian
Troll/Norwegian
Troll Hunter/Norwegian
Black Crab/Swedish
Solaris (1972)/Russian

Series:
Trapped/Icelandic, Danish
Entrapped/Icelandic, Danish
The Bridge/Swedish, Danish
The Chestnut Man/Danish
The Killing/Danish
Arctic Circle/Finnish, Russian, German
Dark/German, German Sign Language
Beforeigners/Norwegian
Capitani/French, German, Luxembourgish
Cracow Monsters/Polish
Bordertown/Finnish