It's a dreary Christmas 1944 for the American POWs in Stalag 17 and the men in Barracks 4, all sergeants, have to deal with a grave problem—there seems to be a security leak.
When disillusioned Swedish knight Antonius Block returns home from the Crusades to find his country in the grips of the Black Death, he challenges Death to a chess match for his life. Tormented by the belief that God does not exist, Block sets off on a journey, meeting up with traveling players Jof and his wife, Mia, and becoming determined to evade Death long enough to commit one redemptive act while he still lives.
A seven-year-old chess prodigy refuses to harden himself in order to become a champion like the famous but unlikable Bobby Fischer.
Sara, a young ballet dancer, drifts through boredom as a constrained classical dancer until she meets Jean, a West African plumber from the opposite side of town with natural simplicity and freedom in his dance movements. Curiosity leads towards an explosion of awakening in both her dance and personal worlds.
Death and violence anger twelve year old drug courier Fresh, who sets his rival employers against each other.
Two men and their charming friendship.
Just after World War II, an American takes a railway job in Germany, but finds his position politically sensitive with various people trying to use him.
Nadine is a breathtaking and astonishingly sensual fashion photographer who gets lured into accepting a lingerie photo-shoot in the villa of the mysterious Victor Schneider. After the models and the crew leave the villa, only Nadine and Victor stay behind. As the night shrouds the villa with its thick shadows, Victor offers Nadine a weird proposal. Would she dare to put her own life at stake in a chess game? If he wins, she loses every right over her body and life. If Nadine does, Victor will kill himself. Thus begins a long night of sex, lust, desire, fear and. death.
A chess grandmaster is in a big tournament, and when his lover is found painted up and the blood drained out of her body he becomes a chief suspect. After he gets a call from the killer urging him to try and figure out the game, he cooperates with police and a psychologist to try and catch the killer, but doubts linger about the grandmaster's innocence as the string of grisly murders continues.
Since he was 5 yrs old, Jose's abuelita taught him to play chess like his grandfather who was a champion in Mexico. Now as part of the Brownsville school team, Jose has the chance to use his skills and for once in his life, finds himself in the spotlight, as he tries to help his team make it to the Texas state finals. As their coach, Mr. Alvarado, teaches his students the meaning of perseverance and team effort in the face of adversity, Jose discovers his own strengths and uses them to bring his broken family together.
Based on a true story from 1998, five Latino and Black teenagers from the toughest underserved ghetto in Miami fight their way into the National Chess Championship under the guidance of their unconventional but inspirational teacher.
American chess champion Bobby Fischer prepares for a legendary match-up against Russian Boris Spassky.
The plot revolves around three men waiting to be deported in a prison. To escape the monotony, they form chess pieces from their bread rations, with which they then play against each other. Grünstein, a Polish Jew, proves to be a real talent, because although he is a beginner, he manages to defeat even the experienced player Lodeck, a German sailor, with his "Grünstein Variant".
A toymaker in Poland specializes in building lifesize mechanical men. He builds a chess-playing "automaton" to hide a pretty young Polish activist who is being hunted by occupying Russian forces.
A man with a broken back dies after his wife has an affair with his brother.
'Wazir' is a tale of two unlikely friends, a wheelchair-bound chess grandmaster and a brave ATS officer. Brought together by grief and a strange twist of fate, the two men decide to help each other win the biggest games of their lives. But there's a mysterious, dangerous opponent lurking in the shadows, who is all set to checkmate them.
Hélène, a housekeeper at a ritzy hotel in Corsica, is devoted to her family but lacks any passion in her own life. When she sees a handsome couple play a passionate game of chess, she becomes inspired to play herself. Hélène's working-class husband and spoiled daughter are soon bewildered by her obsession with chess. They also grow suspicious of Hélène's close relationship with Dr. Kröger, her eccentric American expat tutor.
Yannick moves to a small, quiet town to study cinema. One day when he fell off his bike, he knocked at the door of the Beaulieu residence so he could clean the blood off his hands. But Jacques Beaulieu and his family had other plans for Yannick. Beaulieu is a righteous psychopath and fanatic chess player who wants to rid the world of evil. And even though Ian has done nothing wrong, he is beaten, tortured and tormented before Beaulieu makes him an offer: win at chess and he is free to go. And so Ian is now a pawn in Beaulieu 's game. A game in which he will either lose his mind or his life.
Famed reporter Stephen O'Malley travels to a small town to investigate the death of a national hero.
One-time Maori speed-chess champ, Genesis Potini, lives with a bi-polar disorder and must overcome prejudice and violence in the battle to save his struggling chess club, his family and ultimately, himself.