NETFLIX recommendations 

Whether we like it or not, the coronavirus means we will all be spending more time at home. Cultural events are cancelled. Cinemas are closed. We are told to avoid groups of people.

My thought here is to provide you with personal Netflix recommendations each week, for as long as restrictions are in place, of films that I’ve seen and would like to recommend. This might be the right moment to see films you usually may not find the time for! A problem however with recommending films is their accessibility. For many it is not so easy to get a hold of the recommemded title, neither by streaming nor by obtaining a hard dvd-copy. So, I’m limiting myself to what is available on Netflix*.

There are thousands of movies to choose from and yet it may be difficult to know what to watch. I find the navigation system does not always make it easy to make the right choice, in particular not when you want to have a ’Nexus perspective’; films that help you to process life experiences, stimulate deep conversation and inner life reflection. 

Previously I have written about some of the Netflix originals, films that have been extensively written about and which have gained maximal exposure. It started with the first Netflix original Cary Fukunaga’s Beasts of No Nation in 2015. Bong-Joon Ho (from Parasite!) made Okja for Netflix in 2017, and in 2019 Alfonso Cuaron’s Roma, Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story, Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman and Fernando Meirelles’ The Two Popes. All of these are still available and deserve to be a foundation in your personal Netflix experience.

However, I also want to try to go a bit beyond those given titles and hopefully guide into titles and countries of origin that may be more hidden for newer visitors to the site. So, here we go.

Rinus, March 2020

Photo by freestocks on Unsplash

*Although Netflix is available in over 190 countries, it does not mean that the same films are offered in every country. The film studios write contracts with Netflix, allowing the film to be streamed in one country but not in another, or asking much more money in that particular country. So, in the summer of 2019 I spent a week in Belgium and was happy to discover several films of the Brazilian director Petra Costa on Netflix. I managed to see Elena (2012), Olmo and the Seagull (2015) and The Edge of Democracy (2019). I would recommend all of them (and probably anything from Petra Costa!), but when I came home I discovered that in Sweden Netflix only streams The Edge of Democracy. So, my apologies for recommendations you may not be able to find in your particular Netflix offerings.