A mysterious interplanetary diplomat arrives at a post-apocalyptic planet earth in order to facilitate the adoption of a member of an ancient royal family.
Two Communist agents plot an attack on a dam in Spain.
As we follow a mother and her son, we delve into a past marred by an accident that tears them apart. She will become a renowned artist and healer, and he will grow into his own and a peculiar falconer who bears the marks of a double absence. In the present, a young journalist will bring about an encounter between the two that puts the very meaning of life and art into question, so that we may contemplate the possibility of living life to its fullest, despite the uncertainties littering our paths.
In Genève, bookseller and publisher Axel Thorpe catches willful, rich 16-year-old Sibylle Ashby shoplifting. She brags about her writing, so he challenges her to produce a book. She writes an erotic novel that Thorpe publishes anonymously, and it becomes a best seller. She also tries to capture the love of this 40-year-old publisher but he drops her for her older sister.
Montana sheep farmer Rebecca Yoder offers sanctuary to an on-the-lam outlaw, Johnny Gault, who is suffering from a gunshot wound. Yoder is a recent widow, and her decision to help the outsider doesn't sit well with her Quaker community. As a romance brews between her and Gault, it puts in jeopardy her standing among her devout neighbors. But when an evil rancher makes a play for the community's land, Gault's sharpshooting skills might prove his worth after all.
After being denied a promotion at the university where she teaches, Doctor Lily Penleric, a brilliant musicologist, impulsively visits her sister, who runs a struggling rural school in Appalachia. There she stumbles upon the discovery of her life - a treasure trove of ancient Scots-Irish ballads, songs that have been handed down from generation to generation, preserved intact by the seclusion of the mountains. With the goal of securing her promotion, Lily ventures into the most isolated areas of the mountains to collect the songs and finds herself increasingly enchanted.
2035. Anna, a lonely computer coder, has been nurturing an illegal romance with an AI in a computer simulation for the past six months. When her company uncovers the affair, she's forced into a desperate battle to save her precious relationship.
Group of old friends gather in a summer villa to celebrate a surprise birthday party for Mitzi, who is the dramatic focal point of the group. The weekend starts ominously when Mitzi does not respond well to the surprise party. It turns out that Mitzi has just filed for divorce and has been looking forward to a peaceful weekend. The tense situation takes a new turn when Mitzi's best friend brings her new boyfriend for a visit, who happens to be a Swedish film star. Familiar surroundings and the old rituals get to the core of the group and make them forget their adulthood. Revelations, not meant to harm the balance, make them reassess their past as well as their present.
A woman spends time with her developmental disabled sister after the death of their father.
Following over two dozen different people in the almost wordless atmosphere of a dark night in a Brussels town, Akerman examines acceptance and rejection in the realm of romance.
Agnes and her two sisters struggle through a day in a home overrun by gamblers, thieves, and johns.
A married woman fresh from the countryside meets a charming cab driver on her first day in Moscow. They spend the day together and their fondness for each other grows...
Elmin is a very quiet boy that lives in a loud city. One day he meets Lina, a girl that is just the opposite to him. But instead of ignore each other, a friendship begins to grow between them.
A dry, tragicomic musical short about a gipsy who thinks he will become famous by writing a song for the first man in space, Yuri Gagarin.
Accepting a prize, architect Georg Winter explains that an architect has the good fortune of measuring every completed building against the rightness of his original idea. Soon Georg himself is forced to take stock of the achievements and mistakes he has made in his personal life. An intense drama in which the four members of the family travel to a mountain village to bury Georg's mother. They get stranded in bad weather. This unexpected isolation throws new light on the past and present life of the parents and the two almost-adult children.
Ruby is a young part-time stripper who wallows in drugs, sex, and other excesses in meaningless existence. When Ruby gets entangled with a local drug dealer O-Rock in her apartment, she seduces him, takes his drug stash, and splits. This leads to a series of events with increasingly dangerous consequences.
In the midst of the Mariel boat lift -- a hurried exodus of refugees from Cuba going to America -- an immigration clerk accidentally presumes that dissident Juan Raul Perez and Dorita Evita Perez are married. United by their last name and a mutual resolve to emigrate, Dorita and Juan agree to play along. But it gets complicated when the two begin falling for each other just as Juan reunites with his wife, Carmela, whom he hasn't seen in decades.
In Chengdu, China, a retired female opera singer named Master Chang takes in a trio of young tenants into her boarding home. The tenants include a rock singer and a college student who has run away from home.
On the way to interview a novelist, Lane and Christina are involved in a car crash which leaves literary critic Christina brain-damaged. Lane undertakes the assignment and becomes attracted to the novelist's 15 year old daughter, leading to stormy emotions.
Based on the memoirs of author Curzio Malaparte, diplomatic liaison between the Allied and Italian forces after the defeat of the Nazis in Italy, The Skin follows the collapse of Italian society under the US occupation and the desperate measures required for survival.