Real libraries, where you can borrow actual books, normally have videos and DVDs as well, and they are more likely, even these days, to hold on to them a bit longer and have some older fims than the commercial video stores.

There are various differencess between DVDs in various parts of the wolrd desiubned to make them incompatible with each other. I gather the film companies insisted on this, to stop people importing DVDs of films thta hadn't been released in film theatres yet. And I believe the same applies to videos.

However for DVDs I gather you can very easily instruct your player to accept all the foreign DVDs, you just have to key in a code - Google around on the net and it's all easily available.

Ten fairly recent films to look for:
Amelie
Life is Beautiful
Road to Perdition
About a Boy (I know it's got Hugh Grant, but it's still good - funny with a serious point to make as well)
Bend it like Bekham
Monsoon Wedding
Anita and Me
The Shipping News
Iris
Chocolat (apart from Johnny Depp's Irish accent...)