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You can't know how vast the movie world is until you leave the United States. You needn't go far: A boat ride across Lake Ontario takes you to the Toronto International Film Festival, where you realize how diverse cinema can be and what a tiny part of it Charlotte sees.
Consider this: Last week, only one foreign-language film - the Oscar-winning "Departures" - had a full run locally. ("Ponyo" comes from Japanese director Hayao Miyazaki, but the animated comedy was voiced by a cast of English-speaking movie stars.)
That means Germany, India, China, Russia and 53 other non-English-speaking countries represented at Toronto's 34th annual bash have little likelihood of placing a film here. When they do come, unless a major studio has decided to push a movie - as Disney did with "Ponyo" - they often play a week in obscurity and vanish.
Charlotte has restaurants that serve Ethiopian food, markets that sell Lebanese cookies, stores stocked with Mexican art. But movies, the medium by which many of us learned about foreign cultures in the 1960s and '70s, seldom cross the county line these days. Because they don't, our neighbors remain more ignorant about the rest of the world; the Internet may connect us now, but motion pictures do not.
So for my 11th straight trip to Toronto, I did something that had always been a goal for me: I skipped every movie made in the United States. I can see "Up in the Air" or "The Invention of Lying" when they get wide releases this fall. But there's no guarantee I'll see a great picture from South America here.
Foreign pedigrees are no guarantee of quality, of course. I watched Michael Haneke's fascinating "Caché" twice, but the Austrian director let me down with "The White Ribbon," an aimless examination of (I think) the roots of Nazism.
A few non-American pictures were as pointless as anything Hollywood makes on an off day. Yet the bulk of what I saw opened my eyes, mind or heart to the ways folks behave around the world. You'll wait a long time for these in your Netflix queue, but here are the 10 titles (in order) that I'd keep in mind for the coming year:
1. "Air Doll" (Japan) - Hirokazu Kore-Eda directs dramas about lonely people who try stumblingly to reach out to each other; this one's about a sex toy who becomes human and realizes having a heart can sometimes be a disadvantage.
2. "Micmacs à tire-larigot" (France) - Jean-Pierre Jeunet follows the Oscar-nominated "Amelie" and "A Very Long Engagement" with another fast-paced, seriocomic fable, this one about people who live underground in a Parisian recycling yard and bring armament makers to justice. The title loosely translates as "shady goings-on, nonstop."
3. "Daybreakers" (Australia) - The Spierig brothers (who wrote and directed the witty "Undead") have made a gory but thoughtful film set in 2019, when a virus has converted most humans to vampires. Ethan Hawke seeks a substitute for human blood, which is vanishing; Willem Dafoe plays a human rebel who knows a cure.
4. "The Secret in their Eyes" (Argentina) - Director Juan José Campanella ("House" and "Law & Order: SVU") reteams with his "Son of the Bride" star, Ricardo Darín, for a multilayered story about a prosecutor who can't let go of a 25-year-old murder and an unfulfilled potential romance with a judge.
5. "The Wind Journeys" (Colombia) - If this movie had nothing more than a 10-minute duel among accordion-playing rappers - in Spanish! - I'd have to include it. It's also a touching journey in which a teen who wants to be a traveling musician learns from an old expert how tough that life can be.
6. "Shameless" (Czech Republic) - "Beauty in Trouble" director Jan Hrebejk makes another comedy about a philandering husband and a wife who seeks a better man, with the same mix of irony, affection and down-to-Earth humor. Even the "bad" guy is sweet.
7. "The Damned United" (England) - You don't have to care about soccer to get a boost from this biopic about Brian Clough, perhaps the most shrewd, infuriating and successful manager of British teams in the 1970s. Michael Sheen, Timothy Spall and Jim Broadbent head a strong cast.
8. "Triage" (Ireland/Spain) - Colin Farrell gives his most heartfelt performance as a war photographer crippled by guilt, but Christopher Lee steals the show at 87 as a wise psychiatrist whose troubled past casts a long shadow.
9. "The Double Hour" (Italy) - All the elements of film noir are here: a femme fatale, a high-stakes robbery, a murder plot, a double-cross, a lovesick fool. The twist is supernatural: The woman in the case begins to be haunted by a guy who got shot.
10. "La Danse" (France/USA) - I cheated: Director Frederick Wiseman is American. But this documentary about the Paris Opera Ballet is done entirely in French (and in France), showing the painstaking work at all levels that makes the greatest dance achievements possible.
