Sonntagsgeschichten

1984 was not a leap into the future-but a look at the dangers already present-in Orwell's lifetime. The Road to 1984 intertwines vision and reality. It displays the passion and chronicles the career of Orwell--who warned us of what could happen if we stayed on that road--his road to 1948 and ours to 1984.

Three years have passed since the suicide of Kayo, the wife of sales manager Hagio of Kaihara Publishing. That day, Hagio is surprised to welcome Kaihara, the company president, back from London. Kaihara has brought his wife, Maki, who is like a daughter to him. Before long, Maki and Hagio's son, Kazuhiko, fall in love.

A man died under mysterious circumstances. An insurance company expert has to visit the four women in his life - his mother, his widow, his daughter and his mistress - to find out the causes of death. With each account, the deceased will appear in a new light, to the point where it is doubtful that it is the same man.

Laurie is 15 and she thinks she's pregnant. Her boyfriend doesn't care. Her mother doesn't know. Why did it happen? And whom can she turn to?

While on a pilgrimage, young monk Sōchō sees a waterfall turn blood-red, a sight villagers fear is the curse of a woman who drowned herself years ago. Ignoring their warnings, he ventures into the haunted Tenbu Pass to find a missing medicine seller. There, he encounters a stunning woman in a remote house, but anyone who touches her is transformed into an animal…

Patrick and Elizabeth Welsh seem to have the perfect family…but their idyllic life is rocked when Patrick is charged with embezzlement. Months later, he leaves a suicide note and is presumed dead. Ten years later, Elizabeth and their two sons are astonished that the authorities are claiming that he is still alive. It isn't long before Elizabeth learns the shocking truth about the man she thought she knew.

Tom Weston is a short-tempered truck driver who has always aspired to live big. He begins dating Bobbi Gilbert, who is half his age, and plans on marrying her, which is a problem since he's already married to Nancy. Now to achieve the life he's always wanted, Tom begins to concoct a web of lies that lead to betrayal, deceit, arson, and murder. Based on a shocking true story.

"This world of porn exists to make everyone happy," says Touru Muranishi, 49, Japan's leading pornographer. Acting as producer, director, cameraman and star, his motto is 'real sex with real women in real places'. Despite Japan's stringent censorship laws, Muranishi has been phenomenally successful, making and broadcasting 15 films a month on his own satellite channel. His 'documentary' porn films provide a fascinating insight into male chauvinism in the land of the geisha girl. Heavily made-up glamour models are a definite turn-off. Instead, the women should have the face of a 'princess' and the body of a whore. But despite Touru's insistence on 'real' sex, his films show that in Japan, as in the rest of the world, adult videos reveal male fantasies, not female desire.

George Murray's fiancée Jane Gardner gets cold feet after accepting his ring, terrorized by her first wedding with Doug, who cheated that very day with their wedding coordinator. George wishes he could have met her before she married her ex. After a car crash, George finds himself 10 years in the past, just a few days before the wedding. George has a chance to rewrite history, and stop her from making a terrible mistake. Hopefully, he'll save his future marriage and not ruin the rest of his life.

Publishing assistant Brett Eisenberg wants to be a big-time editor. However, she lacks self-confidence, a problem that isn't helped by her new, overbearing boss. Brett soon enters into a relationship with Archie, an older man who has plenty of his own issues, including alcoholism, diabetes and a difficult relationship with his daughter. Intent on helping Archie get past his problems, she turns to her dying father for advice.

A newspaper photographer researches an 1873 double homicide and finds her own life paralleling that of a witness who survived the tragic ordeal.

To the mentally ill Kriss, the world is divided up into 'good and evil', just like in the old B&W melodrama, 'Pure Hearts', which Kriss and his fellow patient, Willy, spend their days repeatedly watching at the psychiatric ward. To Kriss this film is the bible. One day after a serious conflict with one of the hospital's other patients their viewing rights are retracted. Kriss is deeply frustrated by this, until he realises that Linda, the young girl in the film, actually exists in the shape of the film's star, the actress Ulla Vilstrup. Setting fire to the hospital, Kriss and Willy escape into the night, determined to find her, because life is what you make of it.

A newlywed fears she's going mad when strange things start happening at the family mansion.

Two robots embark on a quest to become human.

The employees of an independent music store learn about each other as they try to stop the store from being absorbed by a large chain.

Vincent LaMarca is a dedicated and well-respected New York City police detective who has gone to great lengths to distance himself from his past, but then makes the terrible discovery that his own son has fallen into a life of crime.

Stephen Glass is a staff writer for the respected current events and policy magazine The New Republic and a freelance feature writer for publications such as Rolling Stone, Harper's and George. By the mid-90s, Glass' articles had turned him into one of the most sought-after young journalists in Washington, but a bizarre chain of events - chronicled in Buzz Bissinger's September 1998 Vanity Fair article - suddenly stopped his career in its tracks.

Three lives of three young people intersect over the course of one summer. A rich student and a young working-class man accidentally destroy a diner when their impromptu road race takes a disastrous turn. Ordered by a judge to spend the summer repairing the building, they find themselves becoming rivals for the affections of the owner's daughter.

Sarah Barcant, a lawyer in New York City who grew up in South Africa, returns to her childhood dwelling place to intercede for Alex Mpondo, a Black South African politician who was tortured during apartheid.

The clues to a young woman's death come together as the lives of seemingly unrelated women begin to intersect.