A tobacco planter on Réunion island in the Indian Ocean becomes engaged through correspondence to a woman he does not know. The woman that comes does not look like the picture he got, but he marries her anyway.
An alcoholic ex-football player drinks his days away, having failed to come to terms with his sexuality and his real feelings for his football buddy who died after an ambiguous accident. His wife is crucified by her desperation to make him desire her: but he resists the affections of his wife. His reunion with his father—who is dying of cancer—jogs a host of memories and revelations for both father and son.
When Pharaoh Rameses II begins to tighten the noose on his Jewish slaves, Israelite Moses, called upon by God, leads his people to freedom.
Set in colonial French Indochina during the 1930s to 1950s, this is the story of Éliane Devries, a French plantation owner, and of her adopted Vietnamese daughter, Camille, set against the backdrop of the rising Vietnamese nationalist movement.
Fitzcarraldo is a dreamer who plans to build an opera house in Iquitos, in the Peruvian Amazon, so, in order to finance his project, he embarks on an epic adventure to collect rubber, a very profitable product, in a remote and unexplored region of the rainforest.
A story about two half-sisters life in the eighteenth century Suriname. There is Lynda, a white colonial and slave owner, and her slave Mini-Mini's. While Lynda is slowly embittered by the hard life in the colony, Mini-Mini gets a chance at her own happiness. The question is, if she dares to seize that chance, as this happiness is at the expense of her mistress and half sister?
A young British officer resigns his post when he learns of his regiment's plan to ship out to the Sudan for the conflict with the Mahdi. His friends and fiancée send him four white feathers as symbols of what they view as his cowardice. To redeem his honor, he disguises himself as an Arab and secretly saves their lives.
Steve Lucas is a nineteen year old who is filled with the burning resentment of being forced to live in his brother's shadow. His brother Adam, is burdened by his father's desire for glory, and must win The Coolangatta Gold Tri-Aquathon, It is the greatest endurance test of them all: a marathon involving a 20 kilometer beach run, 6 kilometer swim and a 17 kilometer surf ski from Surfers Paradise along the golden arc of beach to Coolangatta and back to the start. The Coolangatta Gold is a story of human endeavor and endurance against overwhelming odds.
Victor Sluzhkin signs on as a teacher of geography in a secondary school in his native Perm (in the Urals) and gets lost in a haze of hard vodka, desperate love for a nymphet-like student and the stress of educating teenagers. Geographer, as the students immediately dub Sluzhkin, attempts to escape from the grueling, dull, stultifying reality of Russia's provincial life in a rafting tour to the Urals. Accompanied by wild, adventure-seeking adolescents, faced with the numerous grim surprises of the nature, Geographer is poised to find himself and his own truth.
The story of Michael Berg, a German lawyer who, as a teenager in the late 1950s, had an affair with an older woman, Hanna, who then disappeared only to resurface years later as one of the defendants in a war crimes trial stemming from her actions as a concentration camp guard late in the war. He alone realizes that Hanna is illiterate and may be concealing that fact at the expense of her freedom.
After a woman shoots a man to death, a damning letter she wrote raises suspicions.
Christian, a 20-yr-old swim teacher, is having a hard time recovering from an incident where one his students almost drowns on his watch.
Kinsey is a portrait of researcher Alfred Kinsey, driven to uncover the most private secrets of a nation. What begins for Kinsey as a scientific endeavor soon takes on an intensely personal relevance, ultimately becoming an unexpected journey into the mystery of human behavior.
After his young lover, Gitone, leaves him for another man, Encolpio decides to kill himself, but a sudden earthquake destroys his home before he has a chance to do so. Now wandering around Rome in the time of Nero, Encolpio encounters one bizarre and surreal scene after another.
A soldier from Earth crashlands on an alien world after sustaining battle damage. Eventually he encounters another survivor, but from the enemy species he was fighting; they band together to survive on this hostile world. In the end the human finds himself caring for his enemy in a completely unexpected way.
On a hot summer day, Paloma decides to fulfill her most cherished dream: a traditional wedding in a church with her boyfriend Zé. She is a devoted mother, a hard-working farmhand in a papaya plantation and has been saving to afford the celebration. The priest’s refusal to marry her and Zé will force Paloma to confront the rural society. She suffers violence, betrayal, prejudice and injustice but nothing shakes the faith and determination of this transgender woman.
American-born Anna Vorontosov teaches school in a remote, primitive section of northern New Zealand. Her experimental teaching methods have won her the love and affection of her pupils and their parents and the admiration of the unhappily married school inspector, Abercrombie. Her personal life, however, is less secure; frightened of love and sexually inhibited, she has always been aloof with men. Eager to break down this barrier is Englishman Paul Lathrope, a somewhat irrational and immature fellow teacher who aspires to be a singer. Though Anna is attracted to him, she refuses to submit to his advances.
The sequel to 1956's "Liane, Jungle Goddess" finds the title character still a jungle goddess, but captured by slave traders.
In 1965, passionate musician Glenn Holland takes a day job as a high school music teacher, convinced it's just a small obstacle on the road to his true calling: writing a historic opus. As the decades roll by with the composition unwritten but generations of students inspired through his teaching, Holland must redefine his life's purpose.