Summer is just around the corner, bringing sticky humidity and burning sun. Ready to escape? To help you plan your summer vacation, or for armchair touring from your air-conditioned living room, here are 10 captivating cinematic views from around the globe. You may not have heard of these foreign films, but I highly recommend them for eye-opening summer travel.

10. The Himalayas

Samsara (2001)

For those looking for a spiritual vacation, here’s an enlightening (and very sexy) trip to the Himalayas.

Tashi is a young monk awaking (in more ways than one) from three years of meditation in the mountain wilderness. Returning to his community, Tashi experiences a range of new human emotions, especially lust and temptation. Falling in love with a rich man’s beautiful daughter provokes him to abandon spirituality for materialism. Yet after being seduced by a promiscuous woman and running into financial problems, Tashi begins to contemplate his life and decisions. But destiny has already set his path…

The contrast between spirituality and materialism is a real shock. Until the moment Tashi leaves his community, we have no idea where and when his magical journey takes place. No wonder that when Tashi realizes what he gave up, he wants it back…

9. Italy

My House in Umbria (2003)

Everybody is heading to Tuscany. So be smart and travel to this lesser-known yet no less beautiful countryside.

This movie promises relaxation in old European style: Quaint villages, estates, cattle, breathtaking scenery and Italian men. Plus a touching ensemble drama. Dame Maggie Smith plays a writer who invites three fellow survivors of a train explosion to her lavish estate to recover. There’s a young girl who hasn’t spoken since losing her parents, a British army veteran, a German journalist, and Giancarlo Giannini who is constantly coming and going as he investigates the explosion. Just as the foursome emerge from the tragedy to form friendships, the cold, estranged uncle of the girl arrives to claim her, stirring emotional turmoil among them all.

8. Central Asia

Luna Papa (1999)

For a different kind of road trip, try an ethnic journey to former Soviet Union republics.

Hop aboard for a hilariously surreal adventure through Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan. The story of young, simple Tatar girl is narrated by her unborn child. Mamlakat is an aspiring actress with an eccentric father and a mad brother, who falls for the lies of an actor in a theater company passing through her village. After he promises to make her an actress because he knows Tom Cruise, Mamlakat sleeps with the guy. The next morning, he disappears but leaves behind undeniable proof of the night’s events – Mamlakat is pregnant. Determined to protect their honor, her eccentric family sets out to find the father. The journey reveals a fantastic Asian reality of wacky villages, falling-from-the-sky cattle and enormous flying bricks…

7. Japan

Kikujiro (1999)

Want to discover a totally different Japan? Not urban Tokyo, not Samurai legend, not even Yakuza land, but real contemporary rural Japan?

Then join the most unlikely couple imaginable, Kikujiro (Takeshi Kitano) – a loud, irresponsible, low-ranked Yakuza member - and Masao – a bored 9-year-old determined to find the mother he’s never known. Kikujiro doesn’t even like children, but he wouldn’t say no to good money, so he agrees to accompany Masao. Their whimsical, surprise-filled journey teaches them both a thing or two about life, human nature - and mostly, themselves.

6. Israel

Walk on Water (2004)
Is it possible to walk on water? How low is the lowest place on earth? Is Israel just a camel-filled war zone? If you’re curious, let’s book this one for you.

Ostensibly the story of a secret service (Mossad) agent sent to find and eliminate an aging Nazi war criminal, this movie soon evolves into a journey of self-discovery. Eyal is coping with his wife’s untimely death the only way he knows: by working. When he learns that his target’s grandchildren, a brother and sister, are actually visiting Israel, he goes undercover as a tour guide. While walking them through Israel’s highlights, he befriends the gay brother - despite his apparent homophobia, discovers that Germans can be warm, and mostly learns to open up emotionally. All this makes it much more difficult for him to fulfill his duty when he finally reaches his target…

Trip highlights: The Dead Sea, the Old City of Jerusalem, a kibbutz, Tel Aviv’s hottest night venues, and of course (trying to) walk on water.

5. Russia

The Return (2003)

If you’re into camping, fishing and hiking in the bleak Russian wilderness, this one is for you. Or maybe that’s not the summer vacation you had in mind (unless you’re a KGB/Securitate graduate) - but the movie is worth the trip, though it’s definitely not a feel-good experience.

The father of two young brothers suddenly appears out of nowhere - previously they’d known him from just a single picture. He takes them on a trip deep into the Russian wilderness, in what seems to be a kind of bonding-initiation journey. While the older brother unquestionably accepts his father’s presence and orders, the defiant younger brother wants some answers about his father’s past. But as the trio near their destination, a deserted island, the tension between them intensifies, and the question marks just get bigger.

4. Mongolia

The Story of the Weeping Camel (2003)

Amazing desert scenery, simple living, innocence, animals… this is like a trip inside National Geographic.

Again centered on two young brothers, this is a touching, heartwarming tale. A newborn camel is rejected by his mother after a long and difficult delivery. The little white calf has little chances of survival without his mother’s love, and milk. As a last resort, two young brothers from a nomadic family are sent on a journey through the desert to a remote village, to bring back a musician who can perform a ritual of folk music and chanting to make the mother accept her calf. During their travels, the kids are exposed to a more westernized way of life (television!), adding gentle humor.

3. Iceland

Cold Fever (1995)

If it’s heat and humidity you wish to escape, why not go all the way and take your vacation in Iceland?

Hirata, a young Japanese man, plans to avoid the cold winter in Hawaii. Instead, in obedience to his grandfather, he travels to even colder Iceland, to arrange a proper farewell ceremony and lay to rest the souls of his parents, who died there several years earlier. But from the moment Hirata lands, nothing goes right. This journey of humor, spirituality and amazing scenery takes us through a blizzard, hot springs, nativity pageant, truck ride, funeral, and many eccentric people, including Bonnie and Clyde wannabes and Icelandic cowboys…

2. Bhutan

Travellers & Magicians (2003)

Now this is a destination that will make your friends envious! Locked between China and India, Bhutan is no longer isolated from the world, yet still holds onto its traditions and belief in the philosophy of Gross National Happiness (rather than Product).

This spiritual, uplifting story of two restless souls was the first to be shot entirely within Bhutan. Dondup is a young, impatient urbanite who plans to abandon his home and tradition for the land of opportunities – America. When he misses his ride, he finds himself hitching with several other characters, including a monk. The monk begins to tell the story of the other restless soul, Tashi (not Samsara’s Tashi), a magician who doesn’t believe in good old magic. Instead he tries magic within the corporate world, and soon lands in a dangerous conspiracy. The lesson for Dondup is clear – be satisfied with what life has dealt you.

There’s plenty of company on this trip: A dramyin-playing monk, a rice-paper maker and his college-aged daughter, and of course Tashi, his brother Karma, and more…

1. Cruise

A Talking Picture (2003)

Let’s finish with a cruise! Through the Indian and Mediterranean oceans, from Portugal to India, via France, Italy, Greece, Turkey and Egypt.

In this elegant, witty tale, a professor takes her young daughter on a cruise from Lisbon to meet her father in Bombay. During the trip we get a lesson in world history, as delivered by the professor to her daughter at their different stops. And at each stop, another character boards the ship, until finally all of them gather for dinner with the captain, all speaking their own languages like a modern Tower of Babel.

Plus check out these new picks from the San Francisco International Film Festival from Argentina and China on GreenCine.

We hope you’ll enjoy the fresh perspectives your summer vacation brings, wherever it may be. And let us know what we missed!

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