Karakum, 45° in the Shadow

Anthropology student Daria, who's helping a property developer build a village in the Los Angeles desert, and dropout Mark, who's wanted by the authorities for allegedly killing a policeman during a student riot, accidentally encounter each other in Death Valley and soon begin an unrestrained romance.

Bettiol: Il Deserto nella Cattedrale

Life takes a strange turn when a group of outsiders come to the small town of Cholame, the famed site of James Dean's fatal car crash. Cholame's only business, a diner owned by Max (John Mahoney), is overrun by this glamorous group while the diner's short order cook (Ian Gomez) and waitress (Virginia Madsen) get caught up into this new, exciting world. Unknown to the rest, a magazine reporter (Linda Emond) arrives in town to uncover a dark secret that Max has kept hidden for over forty years.

One-armed war veteran John J. Macreedy steps off a train at the sleepy little town of Black Rock. Once there, he begins to unravel a web of lies, secrecy, and murder.

Struggling actor John Person agrees to drive a blue suitcase from Los Angeles to the small town of Baker, Calif., and hand it over to a mysterious cowboy in return for having his credit card debt of $27,000 paid off. Upon his arrival, John can't find the cowboy but receives an ominously head-shaped package he's supposed to hang onto. While waiting, John gets close to Ruthie, whose psychotic boyfriend, Randy, keeps threatening to kill him.

At the beginning of the 20th century an American woman is abducted in Morocco by Berbers, and the attempts to free her range from diplomatic pressure to military intervention.

An unemployed construction worker heading out west stops at a remote farm in the desert to get water when his car overheats. The farm is being worked by a group of East European Catholic nuns, headed by the strict mother superior, who believes the man has been sent by God to build a much needed church in the desert.

Everyone in his village believes that Zein is a simpleton, a half-wit, an amiable buffoon. Thus, his braying laughter and public declarations of love for village maidens only win laughter rather than anger, beatings or worse. However, Haneen, a wandering Muslim holy man, perceives something more in this figure of fun: genuine piety and an inner radiance, marked by a powerful spiritual intelligence. One other person sees more in Zein than most do- the beautiful, pious and sedate young girl in the village.

Volunteering as a "comfort woman" on the Manchurian front, where she is expected to service hundreds of soldiers, Harumi is commandeered by the brutal Lieutenant Narita but falls for the sensitive Mikami, Narita's direct subordinate. Seijun Suzuki's Story of a Prostitute is a tragic love story as well as a rule-bending take on a popular Taijiro Tamura novel, challenging military and fraternal codes of honor, as seen through Harumi's eyes.

At the end of the Spanish civil war, Fando, a boy of about ten, tries to make sense of war and his father's arrest. His mother is religious, sympathetic to the Fascists; his father is accused of being a Red. Fando discovers that his mother may have aided in his father's arrest. Sometimes we witness Fando imagining explanations for what's going on; sometimes we see him at play, alone or with his friend Thérèse. Oedipal fantasies and a lad's natural curiosity about sex and death mix with his search for his mother's nature and his father's fate. Will Fando survive the search?

While confronting the disapproving father of his girlfriend Lola, Native American man Willie Boy kills the man in self-defense, triggering a massive manhunt, led by Deputy Sheriff Christopher Cooper.

When a lonely traveler reluctantly picks up an intrusive hitchhiker, he is forced to face memories he was trying to forget .

White hunter Allan Quartermain and his enigmatic guide help a young Irish woman locate her missing father in unexplored Darkest Africa.

Two show-business women leave Los Angeles for Las Vegas, but phoney state troopers abduct them in the desert and they are taken to a laboratory/prison. Here, males come to experience sexual fantasies, which it is the job of the two girls and other attractive captives to flesh out. The captors force an hypnotic drug upon them to aid their performances. Then a country hitchhiker they met earlier at a gas station decides to rescue the girls.

After the fall of Abberossa, a conquered desert land ruled by gold and fear, a rebellion begins to rise. Told through the eyes of Sylvanna, a woman born into the Sultanist empire, the story follows Ymir, the first to refuse domination. As war spreads across ancient lands, loyalty fractures, empires collapse, and justice replaces vengeance.

In 1960, the ruins of an American bomber were found in the Libyan desert, but the remains of the crew were never located. In Guerdon Trueblood's teleplay, the ghosts of a bomber crew hang around their derelict plane, awaiting the day that their bones will be recovered and given a decent burial. The sole survivor, navigator Russell Hamner, has in the intervening 25 years become a General. He joins an investigation team that has come across the wreckage, while the ghosts, headed by Major Devlin, plot to expose Hamner as a coward who deserted his post and left his crew mates to die.

A small British army team is sent deep behind enemy lines to destroy a German petrol dump as part of the preparation for a major attack in the North African campaign. Sea of Sand was distributed in the US in a shortened version, Desert Patrol.

Lieutenant Giovanni Drogo is assigned to the old Bastiani border fortress where he expects an imminent attack by nomadic fearsome Tartars.

Two desperate pioneer women escape together across the midwestern desert in 1848.

Beginning of the 20th century in the east of Sudan. Tajouj is the beautiful cousin of a young tribesman who falls in love with her and proclaims his love out loud in a song. However, the traditions of his tribe forbid such love, and his uncle refuses his request to marry Tajouj. But after the young man leaves the village and declares his remorse, the marriage is finally allowed after all. In the meantime, however, another man has expressed interest in Tajouj. A story full of jealousy ensues, which ends in tragedy.