When a young man’s silent pain erupts into violence, his older brother is forced to confront the past and his own role in it.
Three friends in their mid-20s struggle to navigate their professional and personal lives, colliding head on with the messy, hilarious and dreadful growing pangs of adulthood.
One night in his near-empty tower block in contemporary London, Adam has a chance encounter with a mysterious neighbor, which punctures the rhythm of his everyday life.
A misanthropic author, a single mother and waitress, and a gay artist form an unlikely friendship after the artist is assaulted in a robbery.
After the death of her husband, silence and loneliness reign in this old lady's house. She made routine her best friend and faith her shelter. Only in her dreams she runs away from those four walls to a timeless magic land where the sea speaks without using words. Her days go by like this; between the real life and dreams… until a street dog comes to her door.
Romain, 31, a fashion photographer with terminal cancer, elects to die alone, preparing others to live past him rather than prolong the inevitable with chemotherapy or be smothered in sympathy by those who know him.
Depressed Alain Leroy leaves the clinic where he was detoxified. He meets friends, acquaintances and women, trying to find a reason to continue living.
Jaira, Chelsea, and Alecz catch up with their friend, Sujee, who lives in Busan, Korea. Sujee is lonely and seeks people who understand her struggles as a diaspora but her friends have a different image of her life there.
Heinrich wishes to conquer death through love, and when he meets Henriette, the wife of a business acquaintance, she expresses interest in a suicide pact when she learns she has a terminal illness.
The young Friedrich Schiller begins his life as a poet with a dramatic escape. After the sensational success of his first drama "The Robbers", he deserts from the Duke's army. At the Mannheim Court and National Theatre, he initially receives a friendly reception, but his new play "Fiesko" is not well received by the artistic director Dalberg. In the successful actor and author August Wilhelm Iffland, Schiller finds a strong competitor for the position of in-house playwright and vies with him for the love of the same woman. The young poet's situation becomes increasingly precarious; he has no money, suffers from hunger and falls seriously ill. Nevertheless, he works feverishly for recognition and success with no regard for his own health.
A young and impatient stockbroker is willing to do anything to get to the top, including trading on illegal inside information taken through a ruthless and greedy corporate raider, whom takes the youth under his wing.
Successful surgeon Tomas leaves Prague for an operation, meets a young photographer named Tereza, and brings her back with him. Tereza is surprised to learn that Tomas is already having an affair with the bohemian Sabina, but when the Soviet invasion occurs, all three flee to Switzerland. Sabina begins an affair, Tom continues womanizing, and Tereza, disgusted, returns to Czechoslovakia. Realizing his mistake, Tomas decides to chase after her.
The lives of several individuals intertwine as they go about their lives in their own unique ways, engaging in acts which society as a whole might find disturbing in a desperate search for human connection.
Charlie Lang is a simple, kindhearted New York City cop. When he realizes he has no money to tip waitress Yvonne Biasi, Lang offers her half the winnings of his lottery ticket. Amazingly, the ticket happens to be a winner, in the sum of $4 million. True to his word, Lang proceeds to share the prize money with Biasi, which infuriates his greedy wife, Muriel. Not content with the arrangement, Muriel begins scheming to take all the money.
A troubled Southern man talks to his suicidal sister's psychiatrist about their family history and falls in love with her (and New York City) in the process.
No one expects much from Christy Brown, a boy with cerebral palsy born into a working-class Irish family. Though Christy is a spastic quadriplegic and essentially paralyzed, a miraculous event occurs when, at the age of 5, he demonstrates control of his left foot by using chalk to scrawl a word on the floor. With the help of his steely mother — and no shortage of grit and determination — Christy overcomes his infirmity to become a painter, poet and author.
Vanity
Unicorn Human Disease is an extremely rare phenomenon in certain traditional societies. Research indicates that this disease is typically caused by feelings of isolation and the repression of personal sexual instincts, with the most prominent symptom being the growth of a horn on the patient's forehead.
Love and injury in time of war. Attilio de Giovanni teaches poetry in Italy. He has a romantic soul, and women love him. But he is in love with Vittoria, and the love is unrequited. Every night he dreams of marrying her, in his boxer shorts and t-shirt, as Tom Waits sings. Vittoria travels to Iraq with her friend, Fuad, a poet; they are there with the second Gulf War breaks out. Vittoria is injured. Attilio must get to her side, and then, as war rages around him, he must find her the medical care she needs. In war, does love conquer all?
Downtrodden writer Henry and distressed goddess Wanda aren't exactly husband and wife: they're wedded to their bar stools. But, they like each other's company—and Barfly captures their giddy, gin-soaked attempts to make a go of life on the skids.