Top up your watchlist... 19 foreign-language comedies

Directors: Federico Fellini, Luchino Visconti, Vittorio De Sica and Mario Monicelli 

Four of the greatest Italian directors – Federico Fellini, Luchino Visconti, Vittorio De Sica and Mario Monicelli – join forces with show-stoppers Sophia Loren, Anita Ekberg and Romy Schneider in a carousel of sex and satire mocking the mores of 60s Italian society.

Director: Vera Chytilová

Two self-confessed hedonists wreak wanton havoc in Věra Chytilová’s visually spectacular neo-dadaist farce.

Directors: Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro

Jeunet and Caro’s endlessly inventive and wildly enjoyable post-apocalyptic black comedy, about a sinister butcher and the circus clown who becomes his nemesis.

Director: Takashi Miike

Takashi Miike’s awesome riff on Romeo and Juliet, done as a pop musical stuffed with golden oldies from the 60s.

Director: Yasujiro Ozu

A Tokyo suburb buzzing with gossip is the backdrop to Yasujiro Ozu’s cheerful comedy, in which two brothers take a vow of silence when their parents refuse to buy them a TV.

Director: Wonsuk Lee

This hyperkinetic Korean comedy for the #MeToo era follows Bo-na, a dorky girl lacking social skills, self-confidence or any shred of fashion sense. That is until she discovers a secret video manual called ‘How to Use Men’…

Director: Ivan Passer

This wonderfully subtle comedy of provincial life is the debut film of the great director Ivan Passer (Cutter’s Way) and one of the signature works of the Czech New Wave.

Director: Alain Guiraudie

A film about tractors, aphrodisiacs and forbidden love from Alain Guiraudie, the Cannes award-winning director of Stranger by the Lake.

Director: Jean Renoir

Jean Renoir’s depiction of an intransigent society teetering towards disaster was derided upon release and only later acclaimed as one of cinema’s most vital films.

Director: Marco Ferreri

Marco Ferreri’s provocative and controversial satire about four friends who retreat to a country mansion with the intention of eating themselves to death.

Directors: Benoît Delépine and Gustave de Ververn

Legendary actor Gérard Depardieu is at his most uninhibited as an abattoir worker who hits the road with wild abandon.

Director: Yuya Ishii

Sawako tries to save her father’s ailing clam-packing business, but it’s an uphill struggle, in Yuya Ishii’s joyous, nuanced, comic drama.

Director: Ingmar Bergman

Ingmar Bergman’s Cannes prize-winning comedy assembles various couples in a country house in 1900.

Director: Roberto Rossellini

Roberto Rossellini’s film about a photographer who is given the power to rid the Earth of ‘evil-doers’.

Director: Eric Rohmer

Eric Rohmer’s needle-sharp satire of a mayor whose plans to build a provincial arts centre are scuppered by a local teacher.

Director: Pang Ho-cheung

Pang Ho-cheung’s wild, ribald comedy about a Hong Kong movie producer who will do anything to get his projects off the ground.

Director: Tsai Ming-liang

Tsai Ming-Liang’s outrageous blend of sex, comedy, musical and drama is a daring, controversial and hilarious smorgasbord from one of Taiwan’s most acclaimed directors.

Director: Shûichi Okita

A redneck lumberjack is recruited to work on a rookie producer’s inane zombie movie, in this hilarious movie-making satire.

Director: Vittorio De Sica

The irrepressible Vittorio De Sica (Bicycle Thieves) directs this Oscar-winning film of three comic tales of love and sex in three cities.