Even though the protagonist of the Canadian Femme De L'Hotel is a female filmmaker, one would think twice before suggesting that this effort by Swiss-born director Lea Pool is autobiographical. Paule Baillargeon portrays a well-known director who returns to her home town of Montreal to film a high-budget musical drama. At her hotel, Paule has a brief but unsettling encounter with a suicidal elderly woman (Louise Marleau). This element of the plot is briefly forgotten as we get to know the actors in Paule's current project. Then she meets the old lady again, and with mounting incredulity Paule discovers that the actual events in the woman's life mirror the fictional events in the director's film.
After the marriage of her niece, an Anglo-Indian school-teacher, Violet Stoneham, lives a lonely life in her single room flat located at 36 Chowringhee Lane in Calcutta. When a former student starts visiting her with her boyfriend, Violet welcomes them eagerly.
To stop Pinkie's widowed, struggling mother Dottie from marrying a well-off older man they know she doesn't love, teenager Pinkie and her best friend Buzz kidnap her in the family travel trailer to live a carefree life on the open road. They then get the idea to find Dottie a financially secure husband whom both she and Pinkie would like.
Fashion model Emanuelle is experiencing psychotic freakout every time she has sex. Haunted by memories of sexual abuse from the men in her life, including her father, she turns to Dr. Gardner, who offers help while she resides at his mental health center.
Irene is a magazine editor living under the shadow of the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile. Francisco is a handsome photographer and he comes to Irene for a job. As a sympathizer with the underground resistance movement, Francisco opens her eyes and her heart to the atrocities being committed by the state.
The owner of a juke joint arranges to frame an innocent preacher with a scandalous photograph, but his scheme backfires when his own adoptive mother interferes.
The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche and his Jewish companion Paul Ree meet a beautiful young Russian intellectual and draw her into a ménage-à-trois.
Backpacking in the Caucasus Mountains, walking for hours, an engaged couple and their tour guide trade anecdotes and play games to pass the time, until a momentary misstep, that takes only two or three seconds, changes everything.
A 15-year-old discovers the joys and heartaches of first love with an older teen, but in the ensuing years, cannot seem to move past their breakup.
Thiago lives with his family on an isolated farm in the arid backlands of Minas Gerais, Brazil. As the story unfolds and Thiago is forced to confront separations and betrayal within the home, Thiago begins, little by little, to see and understand a place that he had never been able to before, thus slowly letting go of his innocence.
Mayhem starts when a gang of bikers is accused of a sadistic rape in a small town.
Luz Garcia, a high school senior in a forgotten Texas town, wants something different than the options awaiting her after graduation. She's earned a ticket out with admission to the University of Texas at Austin, but she can't afford to go. Her one shot is a scholarship for winning the State Powerlifting Championship. It's all or nothing for Luz . . . until nothing stares her in the face.
A young rape victim tries desperately to pick up the pieces of her life, only to find herself at the mercy of a would-be rescuer.
Collection of short films the summaries of which include; a foreign man moving to Italy, getting married and having a child; a four split scene short involving plot-less images of old people with television sets for heads, a beautiful woman having sex, and overall confusion; and an old man reminiscing over his youth.
Natalie, a gifted New York photographer, has a troubled past reflected in her art. When she struggles to make ends meet in the city, her agent, arranges an assignment in Boston for a considerable sum of money. Unable to turn it down in her dire straits, Natalie takes the job -- only to find that her estranged gay brother, Roy, is the employer. Roy wants to mend their broken past, but must convince her to stay long enough to do so.
An intimate look into the life of a 13 year old girl in northern Amsterdam who 'looses' her Russian mother and older sister to the cruel world of prostitution. Little sister remains alone in a flat at the IJ-square. Through her unconditional love and her lack of inhibition she manages to keep her head up in the relentless world of porn, drugs, and neon ads.
Hunky Daniel couldn’t have it better: great parents, a successful career, and his beautiful fiancée Jen. But in his seemingly perfect life, there is one temptation; he has a thing for his adorable, openly gay former college classmate, Tommy. After a few drinks, Daniel succumbs to his repressed desires sending these two into a torrid affair they will never forget! Funny how love and lust have a way of messing up even the best laid plans of man.
Slightly over-the-hill actress Nina has a fainting spell in a Paris park and Sami, an Algerian man, out for a run comes to her aid. She seeks him out afterwards to return some property and discovers he works at night as a female prostitute. Nina is drawn to him and a friendship develops as he attempts to kick his drug habit and she tries to revive her acting career that sidelined when she moved to Russia for years.
The complicated travails of several generations of Italian women provide the basis for this drama that is based on a novel by Susanna Tamaro. It begins with the peaceful death of Olga, the elderly family matriarch. Marta, her granddaughter returns from the US to attend the funeral and once in Olga's villa in Trieste, begins reading her grandmother's diary. Olga's story unfolds via flashback. As a young woman, Oldga had to marry Antonio a man she didn't love. Later she became passionately involved with a handsome doctor at the local spa. He impregnates her and shortly thereafter dies in a terrible car wreck. The result of their love is Illaria, who grows up to be terribly neurotic. She bears Marta and then she too dies in an automobile accident, leaving Marta to be raised by Olga.
As troubling signs of global cataclysms accelerate, a brother and sister react to their father's desertion and the powerful presence of their mother's new boyfriend.