America: Love it or leave it. Of course, if you like a good story, sometimes the best thing you can do is leave it. Ever since the marketing departments took over Hollywood, stories are out and targeting key demographics is in, with movies becoming more like inspirational greeting cards than examples of great storytelling.

Even independent movies have fallen victim to the same mentality, substituting attitude and atmosphere for plotting and characters. And most of the foreign films that rate a theatrical release are essays in misery, teaching us that people who live in other countries are most likely impoverished and alienated.

But while the multiplex may be as thrilling as a PowerPoint presentation, a rainbow of story-driven foreign films, often with surprisingly big budgets and high levels of craftsmanship, is coming out on DVD so quickly that it’s hard to keep track of them all. If what you want from a movie is to be told a good yarn, I can’t think of a better example than Egypt’s “The Yacoubian Building,” which is out this week from Strand Releasing.

“The Yacoubian Building,” which hit Egyptian screens in 2006, is based on a best-selling novel of the same name, and both book and film have become cultural touchstones. The latter is all rocket-propelled storytelling, expertly tracking the overlapping lives of four couples living in the titular building, a massive European folly in downtown Cairo containing huge, envy-inducing apartments for the well-to-do and a warren of shacks on the roof where the help live. The Western press has attributed the movie’s popular following to its frank talk about political corruption, sexual politics, and religion. But the book’s author, Alaa Al Aswany, has wondered, “Why can’t we say there is a following because the writing and story are good?”

Reminiscent of MGM’s glittering, 1932 star vehicle, “Grand Hotel,” the film pays tribute to the fact that Egypt has the only remaining Middle Eastern commercial movie industry by casting the country’s biggest stars radically against type. Adel Imam, an icon in the Arab-speaking world, has spent his career specializing in comic roles, but here he plays a wealthy man named Zaki, for whom the joke is over. A committed bachelor living off his family’s fading money and reputation, Zaki pathetically chases women a third his age and attempts to pickle himself in booze.

Down the hall, Haj (played by Nour El-Sherif, a romantic icon from the 1970s) has no time for love. A real-estate mogul who pulled himself up by his bootstraps, Haj is making a play for a political career, handing out massive bribes and greasing the tracks that lead to his own destruction. Also living in the building are a closeted homosexual newspaper editor who kills stories about the gay scene in Egypt, a janitor’s son who finds that admission to the police academy without a rich father is impossible, and a young woman who learns that keeping a retail job means making yourself sexually available to your bosses.

Thankfully, the sure hand of Waheed Hamed, Egypt’s most accomplished screenwriter, keeps this three-hour film from sinking into trendy cynicism. The joy of “The Yacoubian Building” stems from its insistence on following all of its characters to their logical conclusions.

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Meanwhile, the joy of Dutch director Lars von Trier’s “The Kingdom 2,” which was released by Koch Lorber last week, comes from following its hyperactive story lines to conclusions that are totally illogical. The film is a sequel to Mr. von Trier’s 1994 Danish television miniseries “The Kingdom,” which is already out in America on DVD. Rabid fans have waited 10 years for “The Kingdom 2” to appear on these shores so they can finally find out what happened with Dr. Bondo’s liver transplant and the mutant baby with Udo Kier’s head.

“Twin Peaks” meets “ER” in this grotesque hospital drama, with its secret societies, restless spirits, midnight ambulance races, and the foul Dr. Helmer (Ernst-Hugo Järegård) delivering venomous, deliciously xenophobic monologues into a toilet bowl. Juggling institutional skullduggery with creepy spiritualism, the series ends on a chilling cliffhanger as the staff prepares for “the worst hospital disaster in history.” But Mr. von Trier never made a “Kingdom 3” to tie things up. As the director observes on this new two-disc special edition, “Our plan for the third part was for something very serious. But now almost all the actors are dead, so there’s nothing left.”

This unfinished masterpiece is a compelling reminder that some stories are so weird that they just need to be told, and we can leave closure to Hollywood and Hallmark.