Advanced Television

Netflix: Popularity of non-English content surges

March 10, 2023

Netflix has shared data that reveals the rising popularity of non-English language stories on its service. In the UK, for example, viewing of non-English language stories on Netflix has increased by 90 per cent over the last three years.

German Language World War I film, All Quiet on the Western Front, which recently picked up seven wins at the BAFTA Film Awards, is now Netflix’s fourth most popular non-English language film ever, with over 150 million hours viewed since its release on October 14th 2022. It has been on Netflix’s global Top 10 Non-English Film list for 14 weeks and has reached the Top 10 Films in 91 countries, including Germany, UK, US, Australia, France, Mexico and South Korea. Viewing figures for the film tripled after the BAFTA and Oscar nominations. For the week of February 20th to February 26th, the film was in the Number 2 spot for non-English films, accumulating 5,470,000 hours viewed alone.

But non-English language content has been growing in popularity for some time, notes Netflix. In 2022, more than 70 per cent of global viewing came from members watching a title from a country other than their own.

Seven of Netflix’s Top 10 most popular non-English films of all time premiered in 2022: Troll (Norway), All Quiet on the Western Front (Germany), Black Crab (Sweden), Through My Window (Spain), The Takedown (France), Loving Adults (Denmark) and My Name is Vendetta (Italy).

Over the past year, the top ten most popular non-English language titles in the UK:

  1. All Quiet on the Western Front 
  2. The Forgotten Battle 
  3. Troll 
  4. Blood Red Sky 
  5. Through My Window 
  6. Black Crab 
  7. My Name is Vendetta 
  8. Gangubai Kathiawadi 
  9. RRR (Hindi)
  10. Sooryavanshi  

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