After the death of Emperor Marcus Aurelius, his devious son takes power and demotes Maximus, one of Rome's most capable generals who Marcus preferred. Eventually, Maximus is forced to become a gladiator and battle to the death against other men for the amusement of paying audiences.
An ex-mercenary turned smuggler. A Mende fisherman. Amid the explosive civil war overtaking 1999 Sierra Leone, these men join for two desperate missions: recovering a rare pink diamond of immense value and rescuing the fisherman's son, conscripted as a child soldier into the brutal rebel forces ripping a swath of torture and bloodshed countrywide.
In 1375, China was in chaos between Yuan Dynasty and Ming Dynasty. Coryo (an ancient kingdom of Korea then) sent a delegation of many diplomats, soldiers and a silent slave to make peace with the new Chinese government. However, this delegation got charged as spies and sent in exile to a remote desert.
When beautiful young Grace arrives in the isolated township of Dogville, the small community agrees to hide her from a gang of ruthless gangsters, and, in return, Grace agrees to do odd jobs for the townspeople.
Set in the Mayan civilization, when a man's idyllic presence is brutally disrupted by a violent invading force, he is taken on a perilous journey to a world ruled by fear and oppression where a harrowing end awaits him. Through a twist of fate and spurred by the power of his love for his woman and his family he will make a desperate break to return home and to ultimately save his way of life.
A medieval nun's convent is the only refuge for women trying to escape from Turkish raiders looking for slaves. But the beautiful mother superior is actually in league with the raiders and her convent is no refuge but a secret market for the beauties who also succumb to her wild desires.
Two slave brothers, one black, one an albino, discover a treasure map which is taken from them by their foreman. They take it back but are pursued by the foreman. Originally, the foreman seeks the aid of two bounty hunters who pursue the protagonists throughout the film. At the end, both the foreman and the bounty hunters catch up with the two escaped slaves, and the foreman has a change of heart, helping to kill the bounty hunters.
Karky works in a shipyard owned by Rajanayagam, a feudalistic industrialist who imprisons his workers in the factory compound and refuses to allow them to have any link with the outside world. How Karky unites the workers and leads them to freedom is what the movie is about.
In an alternate present-day version of Oakland, black telemarketer Cassius Green discovers a magical key to professional success – which propels him into a macabre universe.
Love blossoms between Maroc, a singing boat refugee, and Lisa, a collector of singing seashells who dreams about love.
In 1933, after leaving Dogville, Grace Margaret Mulligan sees a slave being punished at a cotton farm called Manderlay. Officially, slavery is illegal and Grace stands up against the farmers. She stays with some gangsters in Manderlay and tries to influence the situation. But when harvest time comes, Grace sees the social and economic reality of Manderlay.
The rebellious Thracian Spartacus, born and raised a slave, is sold to Gladiator trainer Batiatus. After weeks of being trained to kill for the arena, Spartacus turns on his owners and leads the other slaves in rebellion. As the rebels move from town to town, their numbers swell as escaped slaves join their ranks. Under the leadership of Spartacus, they make their way to southern Italy, where they will cross the sea and return to their homes.
Astronaut Taylor crash lands on a distant planet ruled by apes who use a primitive race of humans for experimentation and sport. Soon Taylor finds himself among the hunted, his life in the hands of a benevolent chimpanzee scientist.
The spoiled daughter of a Georgia plantation owner conducts a tumultuous romance with a cynical profiteer during the American Civil War and Reconstruction Era.
A Macedonian family from Bitola at the turn of the twentieth century tries to survive, preserve its roots and remain together.
In 1747, a handsome but rebellious Scotsman named Richard Abdee is auctioned off as a slave on a Caribbean island controlled by French and British sugar-planters. When caught having sex with his owner's wife, Abdee is given 100 lashes with the dreaded "dragonard" whip. This sentence is meant to be fatal but Abdee survives and later joins in a slave revolt which puts an end to the island's era of savage whippings.
In 1839, the slave ship Amistad set sail from Cuba to America. During the long trip, Cinque leads the slaves in an unprecedented uprising. They are then held prisoner in Connecticut, and their release becomes the subject of heated debate. Freed slave Theodore Joadson wants Cinque and the others exonerated and recruits property lawyer Roger Baldwin to help his case. Eventually, John Quincy Adams also becomes an ally.
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.
The true story of William Wilberforce and his courageous quest to end the British slave trade. Along the way, Wilberforce meets intense opposition, but his minister urges him to see the cause through.
In a dystopian, polluted right-wing religious tyranny, a young woman is put in sexual slavery on account of her now rare fertility.