In 1924, Oskar Matzerath is born in the Free City of Danzig. At age three, he falls down a flight of stairs and stops growing. In 1939, World War II breaks out.
A dramatic history of Pu Yi, the last of the Emperors of China, from his lofty birth and brief reign in the Forbidden City, the object of worship by half a billion people; through his abdication, his decline and dissolute lifestyle; his exploitation by the invading Japanese, and finally to his obscure existence as just another peasant worker in the People's Republic.
In 1920s China, 19-year-old Songlian becomes a concubine of a powerful lord and is forced to compete with his three wives for the privileges gained.
An aged Charlie Chaplin narrates his life to his autobiography's editor, including his rise to wealth and comedic fame from poverty, his turbulent personal life and his run-ins with the FBI.
February 1927: Félix Leclerc's last year with his family before attending a private college in the fall. Accompanied by Fidor, his faithful friend, he will face adversity, love, death, and will embark on the path of adulthood.
In 2004, an officer for a security agency that regulates time travel must fend for his life against a shady politician who has a tie to his past.
Because of the power of love, the last year of Franz Kafka's life becomes his happiest. The well-known writer has never before been able to allow himself to experience intimacy, he suffers from tuberculosis and is dependent on his overbearing family. In the summer of 1923, he met Dora Diamant in the seaside resort Graal-Müritz on the Baltic Sea coast, where he is convalescing and she is working in a Jewish Volksheim. He is a man of world, the 14 years younger woman is from the deep East, he can write, she can dance. She has both feet firmly on the ground, he is always hovering a little above it. She embraces the indicative, he gets tangled up in the conjunctive. But the worldly wise Dora accepts him as he is. And he accepts her. Together they go to Berlin and when Franz's health deteriorates rapidly, to a sanatorium in Austria. They are granted a single year together until Franz Kafka's health deteriorates incurable. However their year together allows them to feel the glory of life.
'Sugar' Ray is the owner of an illegal casino and must contend with the pressure of vicious gangsters and corrupt police who want to see him go out of business. In the world of organised crime and police corruption in the 1920s, any dastardly trick is fair.
New York, 1929, a war rages between two rival gangsters, Fat Sam and Dandy Dan. Dan is in possession of a new and deadly weapon, the dreaded "splurge gun". As the custard pies fly, Bugsy Malone, an all-round nice guy, falls for Blousey Brown, a singer at Fat Sam's speakeasy. His designs on her are disrupted by the seductive songstress Tallulah who wants Bugsy for herself.
Michael Collins plays a crucial role in the establishment of the Irish Free State in the 1920s, but becomes vilified by those hoping to create a completely independent Irish republic.
In the early 1920s, a Kansas woman finds her life forever changed when she accompanies a young dancer on her fame-seeking journey to New York City.
Ailing from a sickness that threatens to silence her forever, Umm Kalthoum, the greatest Egyptian singer the world has ever known, takes to the stage one final time for her most important performance yet, one with the potential to heal a nation broken by the shadow of a great defeat. As she slowly steps onto the stage to deafening chants and applause, fearful for her health and country, a legend finds herself walking down memory lane, reminiscing on her humble beginnings and the seven decade journey of triumphs, failures, defying social conventions, and loves lost that followed.
In 1929, an Australian Aboriginal stockman kills a white station owner in self-defense and goes on the lam, pursued by a posse.
Somewhere in Australia in the early 20th century outback, an Aboriginal man is accused of murdering a white woman. Three white men are on a mission to capture him with the help of an experienced Indigenous man.
A poor French teenage girl engages in an illicit affair with a wealthy Chinese heir in 1920s Saigon. For the first time in her young life she has control, and she wields it deftly over her besotted lover throughout a series of clandestine meetings and torrid encounters.
When oil is discovered in 1920s Oklahoma under Osage Nation land, the Osage people are murdered one by one—until the FBI steps in to unravel the mystery.
On a tour of Britain in 1926, Harry Houdini enters into a passionate affair with a psychic out to con the famous magician.
A lighthouse keeper and his wife living off the coast of Western Australia raise a baby they rescue from an adrift rowboat.
The hidden memoir of an elderly woman confined to a mental hospital reveals the history of her passionate yet tortured life, and of the religious and political upheavals in Ireland during the 1920s and 30s.
The true story of the relationship between famed author William Allen White and his teenaged daughter Mary, who died in a horseback-riding accident at age 16, and the powerful effect the tragedy had on the life of her father.