I’d like to take the arrival of Jet Li’s “Fearless” in movie theaters as an opportunity to discuss the more broad aspect of the film’s significance. While living outside of the country, I became accustomed to seeing a host of foreign films advertised on the poster-walls of theaters. Hollywood was there. Bollywood was there. French films were there. Japanese films were there. Chinese films were there. Still, there was more.

Some Americans are not familiar with having to check which theater has which movie in which language, as some of these films were dubbed in the native language of the countries I was in, while others were subtitled in a variety of languages. All these extra guides on posters can be confusing. I had to make sure I got the movie in its original language while also making sure the subtitles were in English. Sometimes that limited my theater choice to one.

It was a great comfort to me that Hollywood had established itself everywhere. I saw “Troy” and “Star Wars: Episode III” outside of the country, and I didn’t think anything of it, because these movies have great popular appeal. What about “Over the Hedge” and “Click”? These movies rely upon American culture and idiomatic verbal jokes difficult to translate. Then again, didn’t we laugh through “Kung Fu Hustle”?

That is exactly the point: we, like those in foreign countries, derive something special — whether we understand them as the director intended or not — from movies that come from foreign cultures.

While keeping up with Hollywood was convenient while abroad, the plethora of (to me) foreign films had the unintended consequence of making me feel something is missing now that I’m back. That is simply a consequence of travel: the inability to keep pursuing what you’ve only found afar.

Thankfully, it seems that the domestic film industry is so strong, it is seating foreign films equally with itself. “Fearless” is part of the early stages of that.

There is still a long way to go, but we can hope that before our youth is finished we can go to the box office and find seven or eight different kinds of foreign-language films. Business is globalizing; we might as well get to help ourselves to whole new realms of what film offers us.

When I first saw “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” the movie passed through the bold yellow subtitles and changed me. Since then, foreign films have lured me and sated me, leaving me feeling something different, something not Hollywood. Comedy, drama, action and romance are great ways to categorize films, but better yet are the categories of culture.

I had never seen combat as tenderly and beautifully portrayed until I started watching Chinese films. Hollywood has nothing like it. We’ll see what “Fearless” has to offer, but whatever its fate, I’ll keep asking for more from overseas. I want to be moved, and I want to be moved in new ways. I want to see how others think and how it challenges me.

Fortunately students have great access to foreign films. Buy or rent them when they are imported, but don’t show up in theaters. Go to the International House’s foreign film series. When it comes to movies, we beg with dollars. Try some and buy some. Ask the industry for more, and ask for more countries to be represented.

By the way, most domestic film industries in other countries rely on government subsidies to stay in business. Part of the reason is the popularity of Hollywood. American audiences could save the day for some of the best filmmakers in the world and preserve the less traveled-through worlds of experience that foreign films enclose.