An original story told by Uncle Igor, a son of Russian aristocrats, and his nine year old grandson Tonda. A powerful story of complicated times around 1968, a story full of contrasts: Whether it is the relation between what Grandpa's plentiful life entails and Tonda's imminent children's presence, or between poetry and fine humor and dramatic situations of military occupation. Or generally between everyday worries of a person and the pressure of great history. On grandpa's life story, mapping a big part of the 20th century traumas, one can see how much an individual's fate depends on the movement and changes of history. And how much one can defy it and maintain inner firmness and integrity. Or perhaps just dear life.
Summer in Corsica. In a Corsican village nestled in the mountains everyone experiences summer in his or her own way: children play, teenagers flirt, and the elders comment on the passage of time at their local bar. In the August heat, it doesn't take long for tensions to rise as one family struggles to keep grudges from bubbling to the surface. Sometimes a spark is all that is needed to set the maquis alight.
A theater director struggles with his work, and the women in his life, as he attempts to create a life-size replica of New York inside a warehouse as part of his new play.
Following the death of his employer and mentor, Bumpy Johnson, Frank Lucas establishes himself as the number one importer of heroin in the Harlem district of Manhattan. He does so by buying heroin directly from the source in South East Asia and he comes up with a unique way of importing the drugs into the United States. Partly based on a true story.
Paralyzed in the Vietnam war, Ron Kovic becomes an anti-war and pro-human rights political activist after feeling betrayed by the country he fought for.
The story of an old Jewish widow named Daisy Werthan and her relationship with her black chauffeur, Hoke. From an initial mere work relationship grew in 25 years a strong friendship between the two very different characters, in a time when those types of relationships were shunned.
14-year-old Joe is the only child of Jeanette and Jerry — a housewife and a golf pro — in a small town in 1960s Montana. Nearby, an uncontrolled forest fire rages close to the Canadian border, and when Jerry loses his job (and his sense of purpose) he decides to join the cause of fighting the fire, leaving his wife and son to fend for themselves.
Akari finds herself nervous coaching a new undine as a Prima, until she awakens to find that it is just a dream. To soothe her worries, Alicia recalls stories of her beginnings as a Prima, as well as the memories she made.
Cezars Kalnins installs telephones by day and composes pop songs by night. His band has a hard time receiving the permit from Soviet censorship authorities for a public debut. A member of the Culture Committee superficially listens to Cēzars' songs and deems the lyrics "unsuitable and frivolous” and "unfit for the Soviet youth”, and is later powerless to stop the grindstone of public debate, which she has herself initiated.
The streets of the Bronx are owned by '60s youth gangs where the joy and pain of adolescence is lived. Philip Kaufman tells his take on the novel by Richard Price about the history of the Italian-American gang ‘The Wanderers.’
A former Prohibition-era Jewish gangster returns to the Lower East Side of Manhattan over thirty years later, where he once again must confront the ghosts and regrets of his old life.
Paris, 1960s. Momo, a resolute and independent Jewish teenager who lives with his father, a sullen and depressed man, in a working-class neighborhood, develops a close friendship with Monsieur Ibrahim, an elderly Muslim who owns a small grocery store.
A biopic of writer Truman Capote and his assignment for The New Yorker to write the non-fiction book "In Cold Blood".
A man with a low IQ has accomplished great things in his life and been present during significant historic events—in each case, far exceeding what anyone imagined he could do. But despite all he has achieved, his one true love eludes him.
Famed Canadian-American leftist documentary filmmaker Leonard Fife was one of sixty thousand draft evaders and deserters who fled to Canada to avoid serving in Vietnam. Now in his late seventies, Fife is dying of cancer in Montreal and has agreed to a final interview in which he is determined to bare all his secrets at last, to demythologize his mythologized life.
Matt, a young glaciologist, soars across the vast, silent, icebound immensities of the South Pole as he recalls his love affair with Lisa. They meet at a mobbed rock concert in a vast music hall - London's Brixton Academy. They are in bed at night's end. Together, over a period of several months, they pursue a mutual sexual passion whose inevitable stages unfold in counterpoint to nine live-concert songs.
A chronicle of country music legend Johnny Cash's life, from his early days on an Arkansas cotton farm to his rise to fame with Sun Records in Memphis, where he recorded alongside Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins.
In 1960s Wyoming, two men develop a strong emotional and sexual relationship that endures as a lifelong connection complicating their lives as they get married and start families of their own.
Ramasamy profits from the superstitions of people in his village by exploiting their beliefs in regards to the village temple. However, his life takes an unexpected turn when the temple, his primary source of income, is temporarily closed.
The life of George Falconer, a British college professor, is reeling with the recent and sudden loss of his longtime partner. This traumatic event makes George challenge his own will to live as he seeks the console of his close girl friend Charley, who is struggling with her own questions about life.