Hello, everyone I am looking for some leftist films from non-socialist countries as part of my research on the international Communist movement, thank you for your help. Here are a few I’ve seen and I think they’re good：
O Lucky Man! 1973
Another Country 1984 (Based on real history, story of Guy Burgess one of the Cambridge Five)
Good bye, Lenin! 2003（Not exactly a leftist movie, but worth watching）
Léon Morin, prêtre 1961
Hunger - about Bobby Sands’ hunger strike in prison.
Snowpiercer - badass
Parasite - one of the best movies ever made
Salo or 120 days of sodom - very gruesome and hard to watch. Only see it if you think you’re up for it. It’s an anti fascist movie made by a communist.
Fiddler on the Roof - has some mentions of the 1917 revolution lol
They Live - good critique of capitalism and how it shapes our realities
Starship Troopers - fascist satire
Che - no comment needed
Children of Men - the bleak future of capitalism
Sorry to Bother You - good, weird movie with a heavy dose of unionizing
About Salo or 120 days of sodom, I’ve seen it. I was gonna include it, but it’s gross. I would be very sorry if someone actually went to see the movie through this post and was scared. Thanks for the other suggestions! By the way, Pier Paolo Pasolini‘s other movies are worth watching, too. As far as I know, he was a ML.
parasite: a movie that got the academy award it genuinely deserved
The Snowpiercer TV series is even better than the original movie!
Starship troopers is my guilty pleasure movie, i just love it so much. Pure fun
I never understood “Starship Troopers - fascist satire” take - it is a satire in the same way as the movies of Leni Riefenstahl. If you find Nazi customs laughable when it could be considered satire, but this doesn’t work this way for a general audience. I am not sure what Verhoeven wanted to depict, but it is totally not satire - just pure militarism, in my opinion. Maybe he tried to call it satire later on to clear himself idk.
For general audiences it is a fun sci fi movie. The idea is that if a fascist country in the future existed then Starship Troopers would be the movie they’d watch.
The attractive actors shower together without being turned on because service > sex. The main character Juan Rico chooses service over Harvard (despite getting terrible grades). Rico feels virtually no sexual feelings towards his female counterpart but suddenly does when his Lieutenant tells him to.
It’s definitely unique. Most movies use satire in a way that is very on the nose, but starship troopers is saying “here is what propaganda could look like”. A world where violence is beautiful and sex and love are barely existent. The book it is based on was written by an actual fascist. Verhoeven lived through nazi occupation. When he came to America to direct movies he was shocked by the violence he saw. He made robocop to poke fun at the ultraviolence in Hollywood, but we were unable to see that because we are desensitized to the violence.
It is because the book is very controversial. Heinlein when he was alive had probably the wierdest rollercoaster of political ideologies ever, from communism to fascism and almost everything in between. So nobody is entirely sure this blatantly fascist book is satire or not (Poe’s law should be named Heinlein’s law), though most would rather said it is serious. But Verhoeven clearly either interpreted the book as satire or wanted to reinterpret it as satire. Just look at the recruitment scene (and many others), no chance it isn’t satire - even though we now live in the onion world where liberals are rapidly reaching that level of caricature, the movie was 25 years ago and back then it was absolutely obvious…