Five International Movies to Stream Now

‘Men of Deeds’

Stream it on Ovid.

The themes at the heart of “Men of Deeds” — bureaucratic corruption; political murk — are the staples of modern Romanian cinema. And yet Paul Negoescu’s provincial noir feels bracingly unusual. This is in part because of the film’s tone, a strange and uncertain mix of deadpan irony and gutting moral darkness. Then there’s the surprising tenderness of the protagonist, Ilie (Iulian Postelnicu), a bored policeman in a small village on the Moldovan border.

At first, the story revolves around Ilie’s desire to retire and own an orchard, a simple pleasure he seeks amid the loneliness of his sparse life. Scenes of Ilie touching trees and gazing at grass, rapt in imagining his coveted idyll (much to the confusion of his new deputy, arrived from the city), imbue “Men of Deeds” with a lovely melancholy and languor. But this dissolves into dread as Ilie’s second-in-command goes rogue investigating a bloody death and starts to uncover the putrid power games just underneath the village’s charming facade. The good-willed Ilie is both shocked and called to action as noxious secrets unfurl, and his modest dreams of rural bliss give way to a fatalistic sense of purpose and duty.

‘All India Rank’

Stream it on Netflix.

The hallowed aura of the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) and the enormous tutoring industry that has grown around these competitive public engineering schools have been fertile terrain for movies and television in India. There’s something about hopeful millions chasing a near-impossible dream that lends itself to the screen. In 2009, “3 Idiots” became a global blockbuster with its tragicomic tale of life at an engineering college, while streaming shows like “Laakhon Mein Ek” and “Kota Factory” have set poignant coming-of-age stories in the private coaching centers that train students in the elusive art of cracking the IIT entrance test.