In postwar Vienna, Austria, Holly Martins, a writer of pulp Westerns, arrives penniless as a guest of his childhood chum Harry Lime, only to learn he has died. Martins develops a conspiracy theory after learning of a "third man" present at the time of Harry's death, running into interference from British officer Major Calloway, and falling head-over-heels for Harry's grief-stricken lover, Anna.
Jesmark, a struggling fisherman on the island of Malta, is forced to turn his back on generations of tradition and risk everything by entering the world of black market fishing to provide for his girlfriend and newborn baby.
Amir, a young Iranian, signs on with a fisherman on the rugged Caspian Sea coast in order to earn the money he needs to marry his sweetheart, Narges. But in so doing, he becomes entangled in the criminal machinations of caviar poaching. Piece by piece, a complex hierarchy is revealed in a parallel realm that becomes ever more constricting and oppressive, endangering Amir’s relationship with Narges as well.
A criminal subculture operates among U.S. soldiers stationed in West Germany just before the fall of the Berlin wall.
Two unlikely companions must smuggle four suitcases filled with contraband pork across Nazi-occupied Paris.
An undocumented immigrant finds a human heart in one of the toilets of the west London hotel where he works with other undocumented immigrants.
At the end of the war a disillusioned German exile returns home only to fall into the dark world of black market goods and drug trafficking.
A Los Angeles newspaperman seeks a woman's sister and finds a black-market baby ring.
In the future, medical technology has advanced to the point where people can buy artificial organs to extend their lives. But if they default on payments, an organization known as the Union sends agents to repossess the organs. Remy is one of the best agents in the business, but when he becomes the recipient of an artificial heart, he finds himself in the same dire straits as his many victims.
A worker at a Russian nuclear facility gets exposed to a lethal dose of radiation. In order to provide for his family, he steals some plutonium and sets out to sell it on Moscow's black market with the help of an incompetent criminal.
Tensions rise when a U.S. military base is built in a small village in post-war Germany.
An American journalist arrives in Berlin just after the end of World War Two. He becomes involved in a murder mystery surrounding a dead GI who washes up at a lakeside mansion during the Potsdam negotiations between the Allied powers. Soon his investigation connects with his search for his married pre-war German lover.
Maria marries a young soldier in the last days of World War II, only for him to go missing in the war. She must rely on her beauty and ambition to navigate the difficult post-war years alone.
A young female doctor discovers something sinister going on in her hospital. Relatively healthy patients are having 'complications' during simple operations and ending up in comas. The patients are then shipped off to an institute that looks after them. The young doctor suspects there is more to this than meets the eye.
Honeymooning couple Monica and Mike check into a motel in New Mexico. All seems normal until an ambulance pulls up and abducts Mike. Monica narrowly escapes and, with the help of truck driver Bill, discovers the awful secret of the motel and the ambulance service.
A catholic priest in Monte Bello, El Salvador has created a clandestine operating room inside the church to extract the human organs of kidnapped people and sell them on the black market.
Successful businesswoman Maria has achieved everything except what she wants the most - a baby of her own. She decides to deal with the matter by herself and embarks on a desperate and dangerous journey in order to make her dream come true.
At a track near Rome, shoeshine boys are watching horses run. Two of the boys Pasquale, an orphan, and Giuseppe, his younger friend are riding. The pair have been saving to buy a horse of their own to ride...
The sordid lives of an addict, an ex-con, and a luchador collide when an organ harvesting caper goes very, very wrong.
In occupied Berlin, a US Army Captain is torn between an ex-Nazi cafe singer and the US Congresswoman investigating her.