Absent-minded street thug Rusty James struggles to live up to his legendary older brother's reputation, and longs for the days of gang warfare.
Ben Sanderson, an alcoholic Hollywood screenwriter who lost everything because of his drinking, arrives in Las Vegas to drink himself to death. There, he meets and forms an uneasy friendship and non-interference pact with prostitute Sera.
Vera is a troubled teenager fresh out of school feeling trapped in her provincial port town during the turbulent times of perestroika. Her days and nights are filled with drinking, sex, and family dysfunction.
Alchoholic former country singer Mac Sledge makes friends with a young widow and her son. The friendship enables him to find inspiration to resume his career.
In a touring Shakespearean theater group, a backstage hand - the dresser, is devoted to the brilliant but tyrannical head of the company. He struggles to support the deteriorating star as the company struggles to carry on during the London blitz. The pathos of his backstage efforts rival the pathos in the story of Lear and the Fool that is being presented on-stage, as the situation comes to a crisis.
A boozy Broadway actress comes out of a 12-week cure to face the problems of her best friends as well as her needy daughter. She tries to balance the terrors of returning to work with the demands of all around her with humor and insight, while staying off the booze.
A French illusionist travels to Scotland to work. He meets a young woman in a small village. Their ensuing adventure in Edinburgh changes both their lives forever.
Tinke, who has been drinking his health away, lives in a care home, where his dark humour and his friend Veikko keeps him going. When Saimi's teenage twins, whom he vaguely remembers from years ago, decide to find out about their father, their search leads them to Tinke. Saimi is determined to prevent the twins from meeting Tinke, but Veikko, who has been caught up in the mess, disagrees.
A young girl from London moves to Africa with her parents where she befriends a lion cub.
When not serving regulars at a pub in the middle of a sleepy northern Moravian village, thirtysomething Maruna spends time with hesitant Jura and naïve outsider Olin – or fighting with her imperious mother. Lightened with a touch of black humor, this laconic village drama is the directorial debut of the artistic director of Prague’s Dejvice Theater who gave the members of his ensemble a one-of-a-kind acting opportunity in film.
Against a background of war breaking out in Europe and the Mexican fiesta Day of Death, we are taken through one day in the life of Geoffrey Firmin, a British consul living in alcoholic disrepair and obscurity in a small southern Mexican town in 1939. The consul's self-destructive behaviour, perhaps a metaphor for a menaced civilization, is a source of perplexity and sadness to his nomadic, idealistic half-brother, Hugh, and his ex-wife, Yvonne, who has returned with hopes of healing Geoffrey and their broken marriage.
In postwar Germany, a displaced Czech boy, separated from his family during wartime, is befriended by an American GI while the boy's mother desperately searches for him.
After the horror of the Civil War, 'ignorant' Christopher Newman made his fortune. He travels to France is search of cultural treasures. He won't get past the Paris nightlife. After an affair with a haughty painter, he falls in love with the daughter of the late marquis de Bellegarde. She was married off and traumatized by her abusive late husband for the family's sake. Her elder brother supports their ruthless mother, but junior Valentin is besotted with the artist and strikes a partnership with Christopher.
Indolent aristocrat Tony employs competent Barrett as his manservant and all seems to be going well until Barrett persuades Tony to hire his sister as a live-in maid.
The tragic story of a young orphan girl who is befriended by an innocent but emotionally disabled veteran of the French Indochina War.
An Irish miser, his morphine addicted wife, their debauched older son, and a gravely ill younger son. A quiet Connecticut vacation home on one foggy day in August 1912 becomes the backdrop for domestic decline.
Ukraine, 16th century. While the Poles dominate the Cossack steppes, Andrei, son of Taras Bulba, a Cossack leader, must choose between his love for his family and his folk and his passion for a Polish woman.
After a brief encounter with another boy at age 11, Ari Wallenmeier is forced to undergo Conversion Therapy. Now 35 years old and “fixed", Ari contemplates marriage with his long-time partner and fiancée Ava. But when the pandemic hits, isolation and stress rekindles old feelings and Ari is determined to face them.
Bornholm island in 1880, where quarry worker Johan Jönsson lives a miserable life with his wife and children. He hopes to escape his poverty by winning a lottery ticket. But it doesn't bring him any luck. Instead of spending his little money on a doctor to have his sick child treated, he extends the lottery ticket. The child dies and Johan, plagued by remorse, turns to alcohol. After he has gambled away everything, the lottery ticket brings someone else the main prize. Johan commits suicide, but his son Per has realized that gambling is not the way to change the miserable existence of the workers.
Two contrasting social groups get in touch: three architects and three street urchins, all struggling for survival.