Based on Michel Houellebecq's controversial novel, Atomised (aka The Elementary Particles) focuses on Michael and Bruno, two very different half-brothers and their disturbed sexuality. After a chaotic childhood with a hippie mother only caring for her affairs, Michael, a molecular biologist, is more interested in genes than women, while Bruno is obsessed with his sexual desires, but mostly finds his satisfaction with prostitutes. But Bruno's life changes when he gets to know the experienced Christiane. In the meantime, Michael meets Annabelle, the love of his youth, again.
1982, Poland. A translator loses her husband and becomes a victim of her own sorrow. She looks to sex, to her son, to law, and to hypnotism when she has nothing else in this time of martial law when Solidarity was banned.
An examination on the effect of Franco-era religious schooling and sexual abuse on the lives of two longtime friends.
A pregnant Colombian teenager becomes a drug mule to make some desperately needed money for her family.
Tano is 16-years-old and is already sitting in jail. In 48 hours he’s a free man and off to the wedding of his brother. In the two days he recounts his neighborhood in a section of Sevilla.
Two trouble-causing brothers, who in the second generation after World War II Germany live, are in the center of this German made for TV movie. The movie makes a subject out of their everyday lives and the helpless attempt for them to build a normal life.
In nineteenth-century Łódź, Poland, three friends want to make a lot of money by building and investing in a textile factory. An exceptional portrait of rapid industrial expansion is shown through the eyes of one Polish town.
A drama about a Maori family living in Auckland, New Zealand. Lee Tamahori tells the story of Beth Heke’s strong will to keep her family together during times of unemployment and abuse from her violent and alcoholic husband.
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.
An emotional journey of a former school teacher, who writes letters for illiterate people, and a young boy, whose mother has just died, as they search for the father he never knew.
Despite their social differences Luise, called Pünktchen, a girl from rich parentage befriends Anton, a boy who has to earn his own money in order to afford life for his sick mother and himself. Together they undergo different adventures, even preventing a theft in Pünktchens home
An aging, decadent landlord’s passion for music becomes the undoing of his legacy as he sacrifices his wealth in order to compete with the opulent music room of his younger, richer neighbour.
In vivid images, the documentary-like story of a drover and his family in the northern badlands of Brazil during the drought. A family in the search of new hope and destiny.
In this black comedy set in small-town Bavaria, 11-year-old Sebastian thinks you can never be too young to be a murderer. He's convinced that he killed his mother on the day he was born and is certain he's already been condemned to purgatory. Deciding he might be able to knock off a few years of his sentence by doing good deeds, Sebastian sets out to find a wife for his father Lorenz. When Lorenz and Sebastian's schoolteacher Veronika fall madly in love with each other, it seems the heavens must be smiling. There's just one hitch: Veronika is married.
An actress’s perception of reality becomes increasingly distorted as she finds herself falling for her co-star in a remake of an unfinished Polish production that was supposedly cursed.
Based on a real-life story, this drama focuses on a small group of Allied soldiers in Burma who are held captive by the Japanese. Capt. Ernest Gordon, Lt. Jim Reardon and Maj. Ian Campbell are among the military officers kept imprisoned and routinely beaten and deprived of food. While Campbell wants to rebel and attempt an escape, Gordon tries to take a more stoic approach, an attitude that proves to be surprisingly resonant.
Erika Kohut, a sexually repressed piano teacher living with her domineering mother, meets a young man who starts romantically pursuing her.
Starting his new job as an instructor at a New England school for the deaf, James Leeds meets Sarah Norman, a young deaf woman who works at the school as a member of the custodial staff. In spite of Sarah's withdrawn emotional state, a romance slowly develops between the pair.
Schoolteacher Bertram Cates is arrested for teaching his students Darwin's theory of evolution. The case receives national attention and one of the newspaper reporters, E.K. Hornbeck, arranges to bring in renowned defense attorney and atheist Henry Drummond to defend Cates. The prosecutor, Matthew Brady is a former presidential candidate, famous evangelist, and old adversary of Drummond.
Or shoulders a lot: she's 17 or 18, a student, works evenings at a restaurant, recycles cans and bottles for cash, and tries to keep her mother Ruthie from returning to streetwalking in Tel Aviv. Ruthie calls Or "my treasure," but Ruthie is a burden. She's just out of hospital, weak, and Or has found her a job as a house cleaner. The call of the quick money on the street is tough for Ruthie to ignore. Or's emotions roil further when the mother of the youth she's in love with comes to the flat to warn her off. With love fading and Ruthie perhaps beyond help, Or's choices narrow.