A small-time thief steals a car and impulsively murders a motorcycle policeman. Wanted by the authorities, he attempts to persuade a girl to run away to Italy with him.
Eight very different couples deal with their love lives in various loosely interrelated tales all set during a frantic month before Christmas in London.
In 1930s Marseilles two small-time crooks decide to join forces when they meet while brawling over a woman. Starting with fixed horse races and boxing matches, they soon find themselves doing jobs for the local gangster bosses. When they decide to go into the business for themselves, their easy-going approach to crime starts to change.
A gangster escapes jail and quickly makes plans to continue his criminal ways elsewhere, but a determined inspector is closing in.
After his father is murdered by the Nazis in 1938, a young Viennese Jew named Ferry Tobler flees to Prague, where he joins forces with another expatriate and a sympathetic Czech relief worker. Together with other Jewish refugees, the three make their way to Paris, and, after spending time in a French prison camp, eventually escape to Marseille, from where they hope to sail to a safe port.
A Swiss nun falls in love with a Japanese engineer.
"Popeye" Doyle travels to Marseilles to find Alain Charnier, the drug smuggler that eluded him in New York.
Edmond Dantés's life and plans to marry the beautiful Mercedes are shattered when his best friend, Fernand, deceives him. After spending 13 miserable years in prison, Dantés escapes with the help of a fellow inmate and plots his revenge, cleverly insinuating himself into the French nobility.
Bill Baker, an American oil-rig roughneck from Oklahoma, travels to Marseille to visit his estranged daughter, Allison, who is in prison for a murder she claims she did not commit. Confronted with language barriers, cultural differences, and a complicated legal system, Bill builds a new life for himself in France as he makes it his personal mission to exonerate his daughter.
In an attempt to flee Nazi-occupied France, Georg assumes the identity of a dead author but soon finds himself stuck in Marseilles, where he falls in love with Maria, a young woman searching for her missing husband.
Khtobtogone begins as a love story between protagonist Zine and the girl of his dreams, Bulma. But in introspective narration, Zine reflects more broadly on masculinity and coming of age in Marseille’s Maghrebi community.
The story of the struggle of an autistic girl and her brother trying to survive without their parents.
The story of a group of friends, all around 30, who live in the Le Panier district of Marseille, France. It's not a bad life, made up of slightly shady dealings, nights out, sun and just hanging out. But the neighborhood is an inescapable presence. Over a period of a few summer days, their carefree lives will plunge into a predictable tragedy.
Paris, 1984. A group of friends contend with the first outbreak of the AIDS epidemic.
Roberto goes to Marseilles to give a hand to his friend Xavier, wrongly imprisoned following a frame-up organized by his associate Villanova. Roberto sets out to seduce Villanova's mistress, but when Villanova is killed, Roberto ends up leader of the band...
To live and to love at the age of 18, immersing yourself in the carefree summer days and nights, losing your best friend suddenly, and realizing that nothing lasts forever. It’s a time of decisive encounters in order to be reborn.
In Marseille, the young Serbian-Albanian Adria Shala is an illegal immigrant traumatized by her past. Every now and then Adria recalls her life in Kosovo, when she was saved from rape by a deserter called Srdjan Vasiljevic in 1999. They move to Belgrade where Srdjan becomes a gangster, dealing weapons and becoming an assassin. Adria learns how to shoot and helps Srdjan with his work at first, becoming his mistress later.
Almost 19-year-old Marius feels himself in a rut in Marseille, his life planned for him by his cafe'-owning father, and he longs for the sea. The night before he is to leave on a 5-year voyage, Fanny, a girl he grew up with, reveals that she is in love with him, and he discovers that he is in love with her. He must choose between an exciting life at sea, and a boring life with the woman he loves. And Fanny must choose between keeping the man she loves, and letting him live the life he seems to want.
When he learns of the death of his older brother Richard, Thomas sets out for Marseilles to identify the body. Having collected his brother’s possessions, he returns to their home town, hoping to recall their earlier life together. Here, Thomas insinuates himself into the company of Richard’s friends, whilst keeping his own identity a secret. As he does so, he begins to bring his brother back to life, although not all the memories are pleasant ones...
Faced with the insistence of his brother Joseph, whom he has not seen for 25 years, Paolo resolves to give up his calm and harmonious life in Canada, to return to Marseilles at the bedside of his rugged father. He left, therefore, with his son under his arm, determined not to linger in that city which he had fled years before, after a tragedy. He does not imagine that the affection of his newfound family, his love affair with a young woman and the joyful and simple solidarity of the Marseillais will reconcile him with this city he would never have wanted to leave...Marseillle.