In the early 1900s, the fictional Catfish Row section of Charleston, South Carolina serves as home to a black fishing community. Crippled beggar Porgy, who travels about in a goat-drawn cart, loves the drug-addicted Bess, who lives with stevedore Crown, the local bully.
Tensions rise when the trailblazing Mother of the Blues and her band gather at a Chicago recording studio in 1927. Adapted from August Wilson's play.
Lyla and Louis, a singer and a musician, fall in love, but are soon compelled to separate. Lyla is forced to give up her newborn but unknown to her, he grows up to become a musical genius.
A newly-wed man discovers that his wife is in love with another man and decides to unite them. Ignoring the ridicule he might have to face for this, he takes his wife to Italy in search of her love.
Tom and Malte are best friends; they make music together, DJ in Berlin clubs, dream of a career together, party until they drop, wait tables at a casting service and yet they are very different: Tom struggles with himself, his life and the future. When one day Mavie, Mitsch's "little" sister from Munich, moves into the Berlin flat share, Tom's emotional rollercoaster begins. Daredevil Malte, on the other hand, seems to have his luck in his pocket: Everything he touches succeeds. Tom sees no other way out than to escape: out of the city and into another life. His friends try to stop him, but even they know: Tom has to make this decision himself if he doesn't want to stand in the way of his happiness forever.
In the Swedish city of Lethe, people from different walks of life take part in a series of short, deadpan vignettes that rush past. Some are just seconds long, none longer than a couple of minutes. A young woman remembers a fantasy honeymoon with a rock guitarist. A man awakes from a dream about bomber planes. A businessman boasts about success while being robbed by a pickpocket, and so on. The absurdist collection is accompanied by Dixieland jazz and similar music.
A pop singer who has been successful on Broadway, is homesick and returns.
The story of Joy Division’s lead singer Ian Curtis, from his schoolboy days in 1973 to his suicide on the eve of the band's first American tour in 1980.
A vacuum repairman moonlights as a street musician and hopes for his big break. One day a Czech immigrant, who earns a living selling flowers, approaches him with the news that she is also an aspiring singer-songwriter. The pair decide to collaborate, and the songs that they compose reflect the story of their blossoming love.
In 1940s France, a new teacher at a school for disruptive boys gives hope and inspiration.
Belgrade in 1963. In a yard surrounded by buildings, a group of young people of different backgrounds and social status, but of similar views about love and self-affirmation, spend their time together. Their friendship is dyed with various events typical for socialism, such as working actions or Youth Day's parade. All what happens within this yard may become an allegory of one generation's destiny.
Married couple Willy and Therese go separate ways. Willy leaves town and returns years later as a famous singer. But Therese is about to marry her best friend Peter. Little does Willy know that he and Therese now have a teenage daughter.
A comedy about three men who have reached the lowest rung on the social ladder. This story about lust for life and miracles that are possible only with the aid of extraordinary women unfolds at a place which reflects life, love and death like no other.
Heinz Strunk, plagued by crater-like skin rashes, lives with his sick mother in Hamburg-Harburg in the 1980s. As a saxophonist, he tours the North German lowlands with the dance combo "Tiffanys". In this bizarre universe of Korn, Klaus & Klaus and Koteletts, bandleader Gurki teaches him how to deliver cheerful, upbeat music. To escape the vicious circle of shooting festivals and village weddings, Heinz wants to start a solo career and become a hit producer...
The story of Washington D.C. radio personality Ralph "Petey" Greene, an ex-con who became a popular talk show host and community activist in the 1960s.
Following a childhood tragedy, Dewey Cox follows a long and winding road to music stardom. Dewey perseveres through changing musical styles, an addiction to nearly every drug known and bouts of uncontrollable rage.
Luka Banjanin is an unemployed young man living with his parents in Belgrade. He hangs out with few devoted friends who, like him, are yet to find place in a society that discarded young intellectuals. He plays saxophone and dreams about going to Oktoberfest, the annual beer festival in Munich, but he's being unable to get passport because of a smaller drug incident he had in the past. Totally careless about his long-term girlfriend, he suddenly falls for a mysterious woman who seems to appear in the same places as him, and then vanishes as quickly as possible. Believing that he's at the wrong place at the wrong time, Luka wanders from one misadventure to another, gradually losing the contact with reality and living out his own Oktoberfest in his mind.
The drama of a youthful triangle among gang leader Freddy, his brother Jan, and bad girl Cissy, in one of the first considerations of juvenile delinquency in post-war West Germany.
A shy teenager living on the Isle of Wight dreams of pop stardom. With the help of an unlikely mentor, she enters a singing competition that will test her integrity, talent, and ambition.
In the carefree days before World War I, introverted Austrian author Jules strikes up a friendship with the exuberant Frenchman Jim and both men fall for the impulsive and beautiful Catherine.