Trump wants to restrict foreign movies

Impoverishing our imaginations.

Foreign films I have seen on the big screen since the beginning of 2025:

• The Ballad of Wallis Island

• Tokyo Drifter

• Solaris

• Stalker

• The 400 Blows

• Mirror

• Portrait of a Lady on Fire

• Memories of Murder

• No Other Land

• Flow

• I'm Still Here

• The Room Next Door¹

I don’t just watch foreign movies, of course. I’m not a snob! Sunday night, the whole family went to the local arthouse theater to see “The Empire Strikes Back” on the big screen. We had a great time, as did the sizable crowd.

And when we got home, I checked my phone. Saw this.

(Sigh.)

It’s true that some films produced by other countries are “messaging and propaganda.” The Ip Man series of films starring Donnie Yen are obviously intended to promote patriotic feeling among the Chinese people.

They are also a ton of fun, and fascinating to watch².

Some of the other foreign films I’ve seen this year told stories that I suspect Trump would rather us not think about much. “No Other Land” is a documentary tells the story of Palestinian life under Israeli occupation. “I’m Still Here” is a fictionalized account of real people disappeared by Brazil’s military dictatorship in the 1970s. They’re not the kinds of stories you see Americans make that often.

But they’re important and necessary stories.

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I haven’t traveled much in my life. It’s honestly embarrassing to admit publicly. It’s a great regret. I always intended to. I just never could afford to when I had the ability to pick up and go. I always thought I would do it someday.

Now I’m not sure that day will arrive. I feel like I’ve missed out on something important.

What I’ve loved about foreign movies — and books depicting real-life foreign lands and situations — is that they gave me a window to some of the lives and ideas and lands of people who live other places.

I didn’t go see the world. But film brought the world to me.

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Which, I suspect, is Donald Trump’s real problem with the foreign films.

Donald Trump’s tariffs are making us and will make us poorer. If what we’re hearing about port traffic is true, you’ll start to see emptier shelves over the next few weeks.

What’s clear, though, is that Trump isn’t just going to make us monetarily poorer.

He is attempting to impoverish our imaginations.

He is trying to keep us from seeing through the eyes of others.

He is trying to keep ideas from us.

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This, incidentally, is what the imagination of Trump and his cronies is able to produce.

I genuinely don’t want somebody with an AI slop-meets-Jon McNaughton aesthetic to dictate what I get to see and hear.

So let’s be clear. This isn’t about protecting Hollywood, which Trump would be happy to devastate. It’s about controlling what we see and what it makes us think.

I trust and hope he will fail. But I resent the heck out of it nonetheless.

1. Technically an American movie, I suppose, but made by Pedro Almodovar and unlike just about any other American movie you’ll probably see.

2. Mike Tyson is a monstrous rapist asshole, but that’s a fun scene.