After waking up from a coma, Alice has no memory. As she learns the horrible truths about her past self, she must fight for redemption.
Emmi Kurowski, a cleaning lady, is lonely in her old age. Her husband died years ago, and her grown children offer little companionship. One night she goes to a bar frequented by Arab immigrants and strikes up a friendship with middle-aged mechanic Ali. Their relationship soon develops into something more, and Emmi's family and neighbors criticize their spontaneous marriage. Soon Emmi and Ali are forced to confront their own insecurities about their future.
A young drifter working on a river barge disrupts his employers' lives while hiding the fact that he knows more about a dead woman found in the river than he admits.
Parisian everyman Antoine Doinel has married his sweetheart Christine Darbon, and the newlyweds have set up a cozy domestic life of selling flowers and giving violin lessons while Antoine fitfully works on his long-gestating novel. As Christine becomes pregnant with the couple's first child, Antoine finds himself enraptured with a young Japanese beauty. The complications change the course of their relationship forever.
Two men share an odd friendship while they care for two women who are both in deep comas.
Kuhle Wampe takes place in early-1930s Berlin. The film begins with a montage of newspaper headlines describing steadily-rising unemployment figures. This is followed by scenes of a young man looking for work in the city and the family discussing the unpaid back rent. The young man, brother of the protagonist Anni, removes his wristwatch and throws himself from a window out of despair. Shortly thereafter his family is evicted from their apartment. Now homeless, the family moves into a garden colony of sorts with the name “Kuhle Wampe.”
A young couple, Rosemary and Guy, moves into an infamous New York apartment building, known by frightening legends and mysterious events, with the purpose of starting a family.
It’s 1974 and Sam Bicke has lost everything. His wife leaves him with his three kids, his boss fires him, his brother turns away from him, and the bank won’t give him any money to start anew. He tries to find someone to blame for his misfortunes and comes up with the President of the United States who he plans to murder.
In 1962 Hong Kong, two neighbors form a strong bond after both suspect extramarital activities of their spouses.
Returning home from a shopping trip to a nearby town, bored suburban housewife Laura Jesson is thrown by happenstance into an acquaintance with virtuous doctor Alec Harvey. Their casual friendship soon develops during their weekly visits into something more emotionally fulfilling than either expected, and they must wrestle with the potential havoc their deepening relationship would have on their lives and the lives of those they love.
After getting into a serious car accident, a TV director discovers an underground sub-culture of scarred, omnisexual car-crash victims, and he begins to use car accidents and the raw sexual energy they produce to try to rejuvenate his sex life with his wife.
In the beginning of the 19th century, Johannes Elias Alder is born in a small village in the Austrian mountains. While growing up he is considered strange by the other villagers and discovers his love of music, especially rebuilding and playing the organ at the village church. After experiencing an "acoustic wonder", his eye color changes and he can hear even the most subtle sounds.
Second-hand car sales man Willenbrock has everything that he could ever wish for. He is married, has two lovers, a cottage in the German city Grünen, and a BMW. Yet one day while at his cottage he gets mugged and his life is drastically changed. Little by little the world he once felt safe in falls apart around him.
While grieving a terrible loss, a married couple meet two mysterious sisters, one of whom gives them a message sent from the afterlife.
A waitress and expert pie-maker dreams of a way out of her small town and rocky marriage.
Set in the South just after the US Civil War, Laurel Sommersby is just managing to work the farm without her husband, believed killed in battle. By all accounts, Jack Sommersby was not a pleasant man, thus when he suddenly returns, Laurel has mixed emotions. It appears that Jack has changed a great deal, leading some people to believe that this is not actually Jack but an imposter. Laurel herself is unsure, but willing to take the man into her home, and perhaps later into her heart.
An aged father and his younger, mentally challenged son have been working hard every day to keep the bathhouse running for a motley group of regular customers. When his elder son, who left years ago to seek his fortune in the southern city of Shenzhen, abruptly returns one day, it once again puts under stress the long-broken father-son ties. Presented as a light-hearted comedy, Shower explores the value of family, friendship, and tradition.
When a Mongolian nomadic family's newest camel colt is rejected by its mother, a musician is needed for a ritual to change her mind.
A young man, whose only possession is a motorcycle, spends his time riding around the city looking for empty apartments. After finding one, he hangs out for a while, fixing himself something to eat, washing laundry or making small repairs in return. He always tries to leave before the owners get back but in one ostensibly empty mansion he meets the abused wife of a rich man and she escapes with him.
Various lives converge on an isolated island, all connected by an author whose novel has become inextricably entwined with his own life.