5 Foreign-Language Sci-Fi Movies to Expand Your World

Do a search for "best sci fi movies" and the results will be depressingly interchangeable. Most are dominated by superhero flicks and other Disney IPs. And if a list of allegedly good movies of any kind includes Armageddon, then what are we even doing here?

Luckily there’s a cheat code to finding quality options once you’ve emptied all the classics out of the film canon: foreign language sci-fi!

I know, reading is hard. Who has time for subtitles when you’re just here to see some freaky aliens and cool spaceships? But I promise you, it’s worth the effort. One of the reasons why we watch sci-fi is because it shows us things and brings us places we could never experience in real life. Hearing a foreign language doesn’t impede the high strangeness of sci-fi cinema; if anything, it can enhance it!

Take it from Bong Joon-ho’s Oscar speech: “Once you overcome the 1-inch-tall barrier of subtitles, you will be introduced to so many more amazing films.”

Here’s five for starters. Best of all, each of them can be viewed for free online with a little digging.

Save The Green Planet!, 2003, South Korea, dir. Jang Joon-Hwan

If you liked Misery but felt that Kathy Bates’ fanatic nurse went too easy on James Caan’s novelist, then this is your jam!

Kang, the abductee in Save The Green Planet! would have gladly taken a mattress in a cozy chalet and, hell, even a sledgehammering over what he got from his captor. He spends most of the movie in a dentist chair on loan from Hellraiser getting probed, shocked, and screamed at by wannabe alien hunter Byung-goo. Clad in a trash bag poncho and miner’s helmet with various blinking doodads, Byung-goo is certain that Kang is an agent for space conquerors from the Andromeda galaxy.

Throughout Jigureul Jikueora!, director Jang Joon-Hwan tumbles around a stable of genres from suspense to horror to sci-fi parody and, most often, pitch black comedy. It’s not always the smoothest mashup, but the chaotic shuffle of tones gives it an energy that’s wild and gleefully batshit.

This movie is currently elusive in terms of quality streaming options, But it does have at least one fan with some pull in the western movie world; American director Ari Aster is producing a remake of STGP!, and has cited it as an influence on Midsommar. If that slice of pagan horror was too intense for your tastes, the torture porn of STGP! will not be palatable. Both movies do their best to make us hate the character who receives the worst punishment. How effective this tactic is likely depends on your tolerance for said punishment.

It will be interesting to see how Aster retools the story for a modern American audience. Conspiracy culture has changed a lot since 2003. Will the core theory remain centered on galactic conquest, or will we instead get a movie about a QAnon lunatic abducting a George Soros-type and demanding to know where he hides the dead babies?

Time Masters, 1982, France, dir. René Laloux

France is as important to sci-fi as it is to pinot noir and public nudity. The first known science fiction story in a moving picture was George Méliès’ A Trip To The Moon in 1902. French comics legend Jean Girard (aka Mœbius) did concept art and storyboard work for some of the biggest sci fi movies ever (Alien, Tron and The Fifth Element to name a few).

Les Maîtres du temp combines the work of three of the country’s genre legends; designed by Mœbius, based on Stefan Wul’s novel L’Orphelin de Perdide (The Orphan of Perdide) and directed by seminal animator René Laloux. It tells the story of a crew of space travelers who look like roadies for Jem and the Holograms. They attempt to rescue a boy stranded on planet Perdide before he is killed by the giant, brain sucking hornets that live there.

It's a fun, well-paced story, but the real joy of Time Masters (as with Laloux’s other films) is the world it creates. These planets are rife with bizarre fruits and creatures that don’t always resemble human genitalia but often do. One has a giant water lily that bursts forth with homunculi spores that can smell your thoughts. Another teems with faceless angels who worship a giant, sentient lava lamp that will assimilate you, Borg-style, if you don’t fill your mind with hatred.

The animation, at times, suffers from its low budget and, overall, the movie is not as focused as Laloux’s Fantastic Planet, which won the Special Prize at Cannes in 1973. But Time Masters is a winner for anyone who likes colorful, joyously trippy sci fi animation. It has something to offer whether you plan to view it closely multiple times or just throw it on while you’re high.

Message From Space, 1978, Japan, dir. Kinji Fukasaku

If you’re gonna rip off Star Wars, fucking flaunt it!

Message from Space is shaggy and incoherent. Instead of the Force, there are magic walnuts. Instead of Darth Vader and his Emperor, you have samurai Ace Frehley and his mom. Instead of having to hit a 10-meter target to blow up the bad guys… well, actually that part is the same.

But good lord is it charming! Kinji Fukasaku (Battle Royal, The Green Slime) has no delusions about what Uchū Kara no Messēji is and neither does the cast. It’s hardly Christopher Plummer doing Shakespeare in Klingon but no one seems confused or embarrassed except maybe poor Vic Morrow. All the other rebel scum have so much fun that they all lock arms and literally jump around for joy a good half dozen times.

I get why critics panned the ersatz plot and JV acting, but the special effects? Sure, they’re Power Rangers-caliber cheese (despite a big budget), but they’re gorgeous! The starry backdrop is a deep indigo instead of black. Everything has this blue and orange and granite color scheme. The starships loom and rumble like kaiju monsters (one of them is a square-masted galleon with rockets). Instead of PEW PEW the lasers go DRRRRT and it just tastes like candy in your mouth. The story may be shambolic, but the audiovisual language is not.

One other thing: classic sci-fi is not known for forward-mindedness when it comes to female representation. And look, this is certainly not Annihilation or Tank Girl here, but Message from Space is somewhat refreshing in this regard. The women in this movie fight, lead, pilot ships, and enjoy the wonder of space, and never have to strip down to their skivvies or kiss anyone.

Teens In The Universe, 1975, Russia, dir. Richard Victorov

One of the cool things about writing science fiction is that you get to decide which laws of nature, if any, apply to the world you’re building. In Teens In The Universe, Russia has the technology to send a manned ship to a distant planet, but not to make the trip in less than 27 years. Other space movies have their crew nap the whole way in a giant freezer pop or something. But in this one, the solution is simple: just send a bunch of 14-year-olds!

Teens in the Universe is a sequel to the previous year’s Moscow-Cassiopeia, which is mainly about planning the voyage and selecting the crew. The sequel begins with the ZARYA starship arriving in the Cassiopeia constellation, the origin of a mysterious distress signal. The crew arrive surprised to find that, due to time dilation (or something), they’ve only subjectively experienced a year’s time and, as such, are still adolescents. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The adventure that follows is an adorable, goof-ball mix of Star Trek and Boy Meets World. The titular teens are all scholastic prodigies. One kid is an exobiologist. Another invented super glue. They take their shit seriously—it just happens that they are also focused on their crushes, sugary sodas, and birthday parties. It’s a fun little squad of nerds, played by actual teenagers (unlike every other movie about teenagers ever made).

But the real star here is, arguably, the weird and wonderful set design, costumes, and choreography. Our explorers find the planet abandoned save for a group of robots who wear pincushion ‘fros and segmented glasses. Their outfits, movements, and underground lab all feel like something straight out of a Devo music video. The whole thing is deeply silly, and vibey as hell.

Ikarie XB-1, 1963, Czechoslovakia, dir. Jindrich Polák

This entire movie takes place aboard a starship called “Ikarie,” the Czech name for Icarus, which is better than calling it the Hindenburg but still not great.

Some entries on this list manage to look and sound cheap despite a healthy budget—not the case here! Ikarie XB-1 features dated but effective scale models, and a truly space-age score that combines early electronic music with symphonic orchestration. The crisp, black-and-white photography obsesses over symmetry, lingering on Ikarie’s austere interior with slow panning shots that would later be echoed clearly in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Like 2001, and hell, most movies this old, Ikarie XB-1 might not be spicy enough for modern sci-fi viewers. There’s no creature bursting out of a guy’s rib cage or war against a galactic fascist empire. Of course, space travel requires none of that to be incredibly dangerous and dramatic. Astral radiation from a weird black star does not make a cool action figure, but maybe that’s the point. Ikarie XB-1 is an early example of a sci-fi feature that isn’t for little boys or even teenagers. It’s as much about the lives of the people aboard the ship as it is about their mission and the ways they could die.

It would be drab and claustrophobic except that these are warm, lived-in characters. They watch movies, play jazz piano, flirt with each other, and do some immensely awkward couples dancing. When they eat in the cafeteria it’s like a family picnic. The captain and the first officer amble and fidget around and like old baseball managers.

Ikarie XB-1 is most definitely one for the nerds, in the best way possible. More of a slow-churning dwarf star than a blazing supernova, but unlike anything that existed before it in the sci fi galaxy.