In the years before World War II, a penniless Japanese child is torn from her family to work as a maid in a geisha house.
Or shoulders a lot: she's 17 or 18, a student, works evenings at a restaurant, recycles cans and bottles for cash, and tries to keep her mother Ruthie from returning to streetwalking in Tel Aviv. Ruthie calls Or "my treasure," but Ruthie is a burden. She's just out of hospital, weak, and Or has found her a job as a house cleaner. The call of the quick money on the street is tough for Ruthie to ignore. Or's emotions roil further when the mother of the youth she's in love with comes to the flat to warn her off. With love fading and Ruthie perhaps beyond help, Or's choices narrow.
Maggie, a quiet retiring grandmother, finds herself helpless as her grandson’s health deteriorates. When one last chance appears, but money is desperately short, Maggie acts to raise the cash in a fashion that surprises everyone but her.
When a naive policeman falls in love with a prostitute, he doesn’t want her seeing other men and creates an alter ego who’s to be her only customer.
This deceptively simple tale of a bored English couple travelling to Italy to find a buyer for a house inherited from an uncle is transformed by Roberto Rossellini into a passionate story of cruelty and cynicism as their marriage disintegrates around them.
Jin-a, a young prostitute, moves into a seaside motel called the Birdcage Inn, run by a dysfunctional family. Struggling with her circumstances and the family's treatment, she forms an unlikely bond with the daughter, Hye-mi. As they navigate love, betrayal, and personal growth, their friendship ultimately leads to a deeper understanding and a chance for redemption.
Young Frenchwoman Mathilde searches for the truth about her missing fiancé, lost during World War I, and learns many unexpected things along the way. The love of her life is gone. But she refuses to believe he's gone forever — and she needs to know for sure.
In Almaty, a sheltered and chaste woman named Din sees her life intertwined with the experiences of a prostitute who looks like her.
Joe Buck is a wide-eyed hustler from Texas hoping to score big with wealthy New York City women; he finds a companion in Enrico "Ratso" Rizzo, an ailing swindler with a bum leg and a quixotic fantasy of escaping to Florida.
A stranger mentors a young Reno gambler who weds a hooker and befriends a vulgar casino regular.
As the city of Paris and the French people grow in consumer culture, a housewife living in a high-rise apartment with her husband and two children takes to prostitution to help pay the bills.
A henpecked housewife ekes out a meager existence, surrounded by a host of colorful characters: her ungrateful husband, her delinquent sons, her headstrong mother-in-law, and her sex worker neighbor, among others.
Blue is a teenage girl who lives with her Jazz playing father Ham. Ham gets very sick and dies, and now Blue must support herself somehow. Elle, the headmistress at a brothel, talks her into living and working at her establishment. She decides to leave the business and lead a normal life. Elle is hellbent to see that she never has one.
The true story of Whitey Bulger, the brother of a state senator and the most infamous violent criminal in the history of South Boston, who became an FBI informant to take down a Mafia family invading his turf.
After the death of his boss's wife, a young engineer faces the sudden psychological metamorphosis of his own wife, seemingly possessed by the soul of the deceased...
Twelve episodic tales in the life of a Parisian woman and her slow descent into prostitution.
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.
In a world governed by commerce, Ricky and Kate, dedicated employees, find their lives forever changed when they encounter the enigmatic stranger G. As they navigate the realm of commerce, their paths intertwine in a surreal dance of love, loss, and redemption. G's presence, amplified through the pervasive influence of globalized television, casts a spell that reverberates beyond Ricky and Kate, impacting the lives of those who bear witness to their intertwined destinies.
When a impoverished widow’s family moves to the big city, two of her five sons become romantic rivals with deadly results.
Three young boys pool their money and pay V, a kindhearted prostitute, to strip for them. Afterward, she drives them home to the suburbs -- but then her car breaks down. It's just as well, though, because a mobster named Waltzer is after her, and V realizes the suburbs are the perfect place to hide. But things get a lot more complicated when V falls in love with Tom, a single father who is unaware of her real profession.