Do you love watching foreign films but get frustrated at having to concentrate on the subtitles? Well stress no more as directors are taking it upon themselves to shoot films in two languages simultaneously. With the first takes being made in the original language, the scenes are re-enacted in English.

‘Kon-Tiki’ is based on the perilous journey across the Pacific Ocean on just a balsa-wood raft by the Norwegian explorer, Thor Heyerdahl. Nominated as the best foreign language film for the Academy Awards, the unusual decision to film each version simultaneously was agreed by the actors and producers. The late Heyerdahl had always requested that any film made about him was to be conducted in English, however, when the directors applied for funding for this expensive film project, they also had to agree to make the film in Norwegian to satisfy some of their sponsors.

A similar project has been undertaken by Angelina Jolie for the film ‘In the Land of Blood and Honey’ which has been filmed in both Serbo-Croatian/Bosnian and English. It’s set in Sarajevo during the Bosnian War and she believed it was better to film a version in the original language, as well as in English, in order to make it more authentic.

Filming in this way is not actually a new concept. It’s not, as many seem to think, a way to get on board with the increasing fluency of English throughout the world by recreating films in English and removing the need for subtitles in foreign films. Simultaneous language filming was actually a fairly common phenomenon in the 1920s and ’30s after the advent of sound in films. Hollywood film studios created multiple language versions of films to make a bigger impact in the European market. The US and Germany dominated the international film business at the time, however, this way of shooting films proved to be very expensive and the practise was abandoned in favour of subtitles and dubbing. Until now. Is this technique a permanent revival of multiple-language filming or will it prove to be a novelty soon to be forgotten again?

What are your favourite foreign films and do you think that their authenticity will translate accurately across the screen if they’re recreated in English?