Dead of Summer

Ausreißer [The Runaway] is a 2004 German short film directed by Ulrike Grote, with Peter Jordan and Maximilian Werner. It follows Walter, an unemployed architect, who is getting ready to go for an interview. But just as he is about to leave his flat, an eight-year-old boy, Yuri, approaches him at the door, claiming to be his son. The film was nominated for an Oscar for Best Live Action Short Film.

After a whirlwind romance in Mexico, a beautiful heiress marries a man she barely knows with hardly a second thought. She finds his New York home full of his strange relations, and macabre rooms that are replicas of famous murder sites. One locked room contains the secret to her husband's obsession, and the truth about what happened to his first wife.

A hack screenwriter writes a screenplay for a former silent film star who has faded into Hollywood obscurity.

A blue-collar worker on New York's depressed waterfront finds his life changed after he saves a woman attempting suicide.

A tramp falls in love with a beautiful blind flower girl. His on-and-off friendship with a wealthy man allows him to be the girl's benefactor and suitor.

The life of a Russian physician and poet who, although married to another, falls in love with a political activist's wife and experiences hardship during World War I and then the October Revolution.

A self-assured businessman murders his employer, the husband of his mistress, which unintentionally provokes an ill-fated chain of events.

In 1920s Ireland young doctor Damien O'Donovan prepares to depart for a new job in a London hospital. As he says his goodbyes at a friend's farm, British Black and Tans arrive, and a young man is killed. Damien joins his brother Teddy in the Irish Republican Army, but political events are soon set in motion that tear the brothers apart.

In Babel, a tragic incident involving an American couple in Morocco sparks a chain of events for four families in different countries throughout the world.

Set in a blighted, inner-city neighbourhood of London, Breaking and Entering examines an affair which unfolds between a successful British landscape architect and Amira, a Bosnian woman – the mother of a troubled teen son – who was widowed by the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

A dramatic history of Pu Yi, the last of the Emperors of China, from his lofty birth and brief reign in the Forbidden City, the object of worship by half a billion people; through his abdication, his decline and dissolute lifestyle; his exploitation by the invading Japanese, and finally to his obscure existence as just another peasant worker in the People's Republic.

Despondent over a painful estrangement from his daughter, trainer Frankie Dunn isn't prepared for boxer Maggie Fitzgerald to enter his life. But Maggie's determined to go pro and to convince Dunn and his cohort to help her.

Dolls takes puppeteering as its overriding motif, which relates thematically to the action provided by the live characters. Chief among those tales is the story of Matsumoto and Sawako, a young couple whose relationship is about to be broken apart by the former's parents, who have insisted their son take part in an arranged marriage to his boss' daughter.

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.

Secure within a desolate home as an unnatural threat terrorizes the world, a man has established a tenuous domestic order with his wife and son, but this will soon be put to test when a desperate young family arrives seeking refuge.

Guido Anselmi, a film director, finds himself creatively barren at the peak of his career. Urged by his doctors to rest, Anselmi heads for a luxurious resort, but a sorry group gathers—his producer, staff, actors, wife, mistress, and relatives—each one begging him to get on with the show. In retreat from their dependency, he fantasizes about past women and dreams of his childhood.

Lichter is an episodic tale from Hans-Christian Schmid about the life on the border between Germany and Poland. The film sheds light on the everyday stories of escape and desperateness.

Paul Rivers, an ailing mathematician lovelessly married to an English émigré; Christina Peck, an upper-middle-class suburban housewife and mother of two girls; and Jack Jordan, a born-again ex-con, are brought together by a terrible accident that changes their lives.

The strange comedy film of two close brothers; one, Wilbur, who wants to kill himself, and the other, Harbour, who tries to prevent this. When their father dies leaving them his bookstore they meet a woman who makes their lives a bit better yet with a bit more trouble as well.

Two youths, Niño and Compi, enter the world of drug smuggling in the Strait of Gibraltar; while two police officers, Jesús and Eva, try to eradicate the contraband.