In 1900s India, Calcuttan zamindar Devdas Mukherjee — unable to marry his lover — takes up alcohol and the company of a courtesan to alleviate the pain.
In 1870s India, Charulata is an isolated, artistically inclined woman who sees little of her busy journalist husband, Bhupati. Realizing that his wife is alienated and unhappy, he convinces his cousin, Amal, to spend time with Charulata and nourish her creative impulses. Amal is a fledgling poet himself, and he and Charulata bond over their shared love of art.
In 'The Circus Kid', Buddy, an orphan who runs away from a a harsh orphanage, joins Cadwallader's Circus.
Angered at stern Uncle Daniel, Toby Tyler runs away from his foster home to join the circus, where he soon befriends Mr. Stubbs, the frisky chimpanzee. However, the circus isn't all fun and games when the evil candy vendor, Harry Tupper, convinces Toby that his Aunt Olive and Uncle Daniel don't love him or want him back. Toby resigns himself to circus life, but when he finally realizes that Tupper lied to him, and that his aunt and uncle truly love him, Toby happily returns home once again.
Apu is a jobless ex-student dreaming vaguely of a future as a writer. An old college friend talks him into a visit up-country to a village wedding. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 1996.
Aparajito picks up where the first film leaves off, with Apu and his family having moved away from the country to live in the bustling holy city of Varanasi (then known as Benares). As Apu progresses from wide-eyed child to intellectually curious teenager, eventually studying in Kolkata, we witness his academic and moral education, as well as the growing complexity of his relationship with his mother. This tenderly expressive, often heart-wrenching film, which won three top prizes at the Venice Film Festival, including the Golden Lion, not only extends but also spiritually deepens the tale of Apu. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 1996.
Singing Marseilles docker Joe is hired by wealthy English couple, the Oliphants, to find their missing son Gerald. When Joe finds him, he learns Gerald escaped of his own will and takes him to stay with a local singer, who offers a refuge from his repressed white parents.
Neale and Pedro fly cargo between Chungking and Calcutta. When their buddy Bill is murdered they investigate. Neale meets Bill's fiancée Virginia and becomes suspicious of a deeper plot while also falling for her charms.
Linda Wadsworth rebels against her millionaire grandfather, J. H. Wadsworth, and runs away from home. Unknown to Mr. Wadsworth, she gets a job at one of his many five-and-ten-cents stores as a clerk.
12-year-old Mully has lost his mother and discovers his debt-ridden father stealing the charity money they've raised in her name. Grabbing the cash, Mully steals a taxi and is shocked to find a woman, Joy, in the back seat with a baby. A straight-talking solicitor who didn't expect to get pregnant, Joy is struggling with motherhood and planning to give her baby to a friend who will raise the child as her own. She joins Mully on a wild journey across Ireland, stealing cars, hitch-hiking, catching ferries and breaking police barricades.
Kaylee, a 14-year-old emo-goth, thinks she is top of the food chain when it comes to being misunderstood. After a monster fight with her parents over her texting habits, Kaylee runs away to her understanding grandma’s house. All is going well until Kaylee’s cell phone battery runs out.
A mother keeps making excuses for why her son's father has not returned home. Jon Marco, just celebrating his ninth birthday, concludes his parents have separated and develops a plan to place himself in dad's care. Along with a new friend they run away to Milan to search for Marco's father. Once executed, our little hero learns the truth about his famous race-car driving father. Can mom and his pals help him deal with the trauma?
A selfless young woman, the daughter of a middle-class refugee family from East Pakistan, sacrifices her own happiness for her unappreciative family.
Lucy is eleven years old. Having been neglected by her estranged mother and father, she is placed in a children's home. Through her eyes, we follow her struggle to cope with the system; her only saving being her self-belief and certainty that she is being watched over and protected by the holy spirit.
A 12-year-old girl goes on a car ride with a man she met online to prove she is not a child anymore.
Max Lowe is a Houston surgeon who has grown weary of the bureaucracy of American medicine. When he loses a patient on the operating table, Max impulsively decides to leave America and travel to India in the hope of finding himself. Not long after he arrives in Calcutta, Max is attacked by a group of thugs and left without money or a passport.
In postwar Germany, a displaced Czech boy, separated from his family during wartime, is befriended by an American GI while the boy's mother desperately searches for him.
Siddhartho Chowdhury, a brilliant young medical student, is forced to leave his studies after his father's sudden demise. He is forced to navigate the high unemployment rate and the communist socio-political climate of 1960s Calcutta in search of a job. He lives in a flat with his younger, employed sister, revolutionary brother and widowed mother. The strain of the situation ultimately causes him to hallucinate.
A well-off Indian family is paid an unexpected, and rather unwanted, visit by a man claiming to be the woman's long lost uncle. The initial suspicion with which they greet the man slowly dissolves as he regales them with stories of his travels, tales that are at odds with their conventional middle class perspective on the world.
Life at home changes when a housewife from a middle-class, conservative family in Calcutta gets a job as a salesperson. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with The Film Foundation in 1996.