• Home »
  • Lists »
  • Wander with Movies Set around the World

List

Wander with Movies Set around the World

By Cecilia Cygnar

Since we can't travel right now, use these films to escape your house and see the world.

  • Enchanted April

    1992

    Explore Italy with this breathtakingly beautiful, charming film set in the Italian Riviera. Part love story, part rite of passage tale, part friendship saga, this one is filled with all of the colors, tones and breezes you would expect from its setting. If you do not want to run to Italy after watching this, that means the quarantine hasn't been lifted yet!

    Get this item

  • A Room With A View

    2008

    Based on the E.M. Forster novel, this film lives up to Forster's lush, vivid words. Filled with sensuality and nostalgia and set post-WWII, Italy shines in a slow, lazy way, which matches the methodical nature of the story.

    Get this item

  • The Shipping News

    2001

    Way up in a tiny fishing village in Newfoundland, a father and daughter escape New York--and life. Based on a fantastically vivid novel by E. Annie Proulx, the movie does an excellent job of bringing to life not only Proulx's characters and story but also the loneliness of rural Canada.

    Get this item

  • Ondine

    2010

    Part love story, part fantasy, this film is directed by the famed Irish filmmaker Neil Jordan. After a fisherman catches more than just fish in his nets, myths of the region begin to come to life for him and his daughter. Wonderful scenery of Ireland's coasts here; worth to watch just for that!

    Get this item

  • The Englishman Who Went up A Hill but Came Down A Mountain

    1995

    Hugh Grant plays the title Englishman who, as a cartographer, heads to a Welsh town to determine if the town's "mountain" is legitimate or just a simple mound. The countryside of Wales comes to life here in all of its bleak, wild glory.

    Get this item

  • 2 Days in Paris

    2007

    Directed, written and starring Julie Delpy, the location of this one is no surprise. What is a surprise is that in addition to the draw of the Paris scenery, the story here is a true gem. What starts off as a Paris holiday turns into an interesting time of neurotic behavior and interfering gossip. Sounds like it's not, but this is really a lot of fun. It's a comedy after all.

    Get this item

  • The Man from Beijing

    2016

    Based on the worldwide bestseller by Henning Mankell (known for the Wallander series), this film starts in a small town in Sweden and ends up in China. Though the story is all intense thriller, the scenery is breathtaking and comes to life on the screen. The Swedish landscape is bleak compared to the franticness of China.

    Get this item

  • Anna Karenina: Season 1

    2000

    Set in 19th Century Russia, the coldness and desolation of the Russian scenery is really part of the story here, just like it is in Leo Tolstoy's novel. Anna, like Russian winters, is filled with a frenetic passion that is also highly detrimental to her well-being.

    Get this item

  • Hotel Mumbai

    2019

    Even though you don't see much of the Indian landscape other than the area around the hotel in Mumbai, the film still gives the feel of the confusion and frenzy that fills a large city center in India. Based on a true story, what these people went through in this hotel during this siege will stay with you for a long while.

    Get this item

  • Rabbit-proof Fence

    2003

    In 1931's Western Australia, aboriginal children are taken from their families and put into white homes with the hope the children become acclimated to non-aboriginal society. Even though it's set in the past, this one could not be more timely. And the scenery here is truly breathtaking.

    Get this item

  • A Small Act

    2010

    Starting out in rural Kenya, this film eventually heads to Harvard University, but it's about Africa and the beauty of the setting is captured on film. Part dry and part lush, Africa looks different here than it does in other films. It just looks like home.

    Get this item

  • Daughters of the Dust

    2019

    At first look, you might think this one is set in Africa: the people featured have brought their African culture with them. But they brought it to their homes on islands off the coasts of Georgia and South Carolina. Even though this film is set in 1902, they lived in this way for decades into the 20th Century. Directed by Julie Dash.

    Get this item

  • Cold Mountain

    2004

    At the end of the Civil War, a wounded soldier treks back to his home in North Carolina on foot. Kind of like a road movie, the lush, rural American landscape is more than just part of this story: it is the story for much of the film.

    Get this item