Will Hipsters be this year’s Slumdog Millionaire? Photo courtesy of the Toronto Interational Film Festival website.

Last year, British veteran Danny Boyle’s new film premiered in the Telluride, Colorado. Although his project flew more or less under the radar prior to his debut, the feel-good film was met with almost universal praise from the Telluride critics. Slumdog Millionaire became an overnight success, reaching a level of buzz that few foreign films accomplish. To be fair, the film may be foreign, but it is not Indian. The film was British-directed and British-produced, and the film’s lead is British-born. However, it featured a culture and a distinctly Bollywood attitude foreign to the majority of Americans. It achieved fantastic numbers at the box office, not to mention eight Academy Awards.

In the fading shadow of Slumdog’s monumental success, the critics have been repeating one question ad nauseum: What film will be this year’s Slumdog?

One may counter, “Who cares?” I did for a while. Must every well-received film be met with an appropriate analogy the subsequent year? At the end of the day, however, American moviegoers enjoyed (cherished? worshiped?) a film with a setting and a culture far from that of the United States. I don’t want to get my hopes up, but it would be nice if that happened again.

Will any of this year’s foreign films excite American moviegoers like Slumdog did? There are a few contenders. From France, Give Me Your Hand (Donne-Moi la Main), in which twin brothers journey across the European countryside to attend the funeral of a mother they never met. One is gay, one is straight. What could be more French? Americans haven’t had the fondest feelings toward the French in the past decade (recall the “freedom fries” episode), and this sensual, dramatic and thoroughly relatable film could just be the kindle that reignites the Francomania that Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless created in the ’60s.

The South Korean historical saga A Frozen Flower (Ssanghwajeom) follows the King of Goryeo’s bisexual love triangle. The film has everything American audiences love in their foreign films: The medieval battles of Lord of the Rings; the royal intrigue of The Queen and the unapologetic sexuality of The Lives of Others. And with its epic 130 minute runtime, this medieval epic could be Korea’s answer to China’s extremely well-received Hero (Yingxióng).

In a competitive year of international films, the most likely analogy to Slumdog Millionaire is Russia’s Hipsters (Stilyagi). While the U.S. was busy constructing a nuclear arsenal against the U.S.S.R. in the 1950s, a group of young Russians embrace American culture, exaggerate rock-n-roll dress and music to ridiculous heights and stir controversy in the culturally conservative Communist state. It’s quirky, it’s poppy, and it’s fun. And on top of that, it’s a musical.

Hipsters is really two movies in one. In fact, it’s the same two movies Slumdog is. Firstly, these films are a cultural portrait of an downtrodden, corruption-ridden society. Secondly, and most importantly, these films are uplifting stories about the unimaginable power of human connection. And they both pay their dues to the United States, as well. As Slumdog’s Jamal used an American-imported game show as a means of escaping his poverty, the titular hipsters use American-imported music as a means of escaping their repressive culture.

Could Hipsters-mania sweep the U.S.? Could its poppy songs catch on like Slumdog’s “Jai Ho?” Maybe. If Slumdog taught us one thing, it’s that anything is possible. And personally, I thought Hipsters was fantastic. I, for one, would like to believe.