How old were you when you first saw a foreign language film?

Probably early thirties. No, wait, I saw a french film set in Greece when I was around 22. He Who Must Die, by Jules Dassin.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/He_Who_Must_Die

The best of my ability, I believe El mariachi (1992) was the first foreign language film I remember seeing.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104815/combined


I was 21 and I rented this video while I was stationed in Germany.

this is the first one I remember

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057069/?ref_=asrtt_sr_tt

1962

I was 5

there may have been some at hamburgboy's work Christmas party before that as they always had movies, but I don't remember them

If you don't mind me asking, what was your native language (the language you grew up with) German perhaps?

Sounds like one I could like. Not a bad graphic either.

German at home, Portuguese on the street initially. I learned English through story hour at the library before starting kindergarten. I'm not sure, but I suspect I had a funny accent for my first few years of school.

I hope fbaezer sees this. I think I've seen great gobs of 'foreign' films, but he has me beaten by hundreds of them, I bet. Probably way better at remembering and analyzing them too. I think he's conversant in a few or more languages, so then it gets to be interesting, re what is foreign (aka strange; in italian, foreigners are stranieri...).

I got to go to Canada with my parents when I was nine, and I did have a mild sense of "foreign" at the same time not at all scarily so.

I was 14 when I've been in England for the first time ... and went to the cinema there. The first films were westerns, but I can't remember the A-film. But the B-fim was one with John Wayne. (I nearly left the cinema afterwards, because I didn't expect another film to come, thought, they had changed the program.)

The most fun watching a foreign film was in 1971, when my friend and I saw in Paris, on the Champs-d'Elysees a German film but in the English synchronisation with French subtitles (Alexander Kluge's Artists Under the Big Top: Perplexed) My friend was 19, I was 22.

The first I can definitely remember is "Le Ballon rouge"* when I was 8. It's a well known French short. We had regular film shows at school using a 16mm projector, and our school started French at that age. The UK TV channel BBC 2 used to show subtitled foreign language films on Saturday nights from when I was 12, but way before that there were subtitled kid's shows in German, French, Italian, Polish, Czech, Russian, Japanese, Spanish... I became a foreign movie enthusiast from the age of about 16.

* Correct French title capitalisation

I must have been about 8 or 9 years old when my mother took me to see La Belle et la Bete at a neighborhood art-house theater.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beauty_and_the_Beast_(1946_film)

It was a good choice because I was familiar with the story of Beauty and the Beast, so the foreign language was not a problem, but, because all the showings were in the evening, I remember having a little difficulty staying awake until it ended. I can still recall some of the wondrous images and effects from that film, it was unlike anything I had ever seen before.

What a good start you had, three languages very early. I didn't know that aboutcha.

Tangent warning -
One thing about the ESL thing is that it's a misnomer - so many people aren't learning english as their second one. Is ESL as a concept entirely US education jargon? I had an acquaintance (friend of one of my girlfriends group) who got a doctorate in it somewhere fancy. What I remember about her is a tendency to pedantry in general, not to be mean, just that was her mien.
So, re the english language learning tags here on a2k, I might start using ENL, english as a new language. That'll throw 'em.

The critically acclaimed movie is famous for being the first film for schlock director, Robert Rodriguez. He shot this movie with a $5000 (or so budget).
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/el_mariachi/

I've learnt English as a Foreign Language (EFL).

In the UK we used to call it it ESL but now it's officially ESOL ("English for Speakers of Other Languages) but many people use them interchangeably.

I use the EFL tag quite a bit here. It reflects many students' reality better.

We qualify people as EFL instructors, not ESL instructors.

I see I have some researching to do. (My ex and his writing/directing partner spent a long time working/dealing with a mexican actor and his production company. I didn't hate all that, there had been a chance we would all be going to Cuernavaca for a while, but it didn't work out.)

Actually, we had had in the 60's four cinemas in a radius of less than 20 miles of my native town, which only showed foreign films, in English (and French). But they were only for the British and Canadian forces personnel and their dependants. And they really didn't let us in.

Ok, that's doable, I may start adding it.

Dem bastard jerks!