Katherine Watson is a recent UCLA graduate hired to teach art history at the prestigious all-female Wellesley College, in 1953. Determined to confront the outdated mores of society and the institution that embraces them, Katherine inspires her traditional students, including Betty and Joan, to challenge the lives they are expected to lead.
Orphaned after a Nazi air raid, Paulette, a young Parisian girl, runs into Michel, an older peasant boy, and the two quickly become close. Together, they try to make sense of the chaotic and crumbling world around them, attempting to cope with death as they create a burial ground for Paulette's deceased pet dog. Eventually, however, Paulette's stay with Michel's family is threatened by the harsh realities of wartime.
A young academy soldier, Maciek Chelmicki, is ordered to shoot the secretary of the KW PPR. A coincidence causes him to kill someone else. Meeting face to face with his victim, he gets a shock. He faces the necessity of repeating the assassination. He meets Krystyna, a girl working as a barmaid in the restaurant of the "Monopol" hotel. His affection for her makes him even more aware of the senselessness of killing at the end of the war. Loyalty to the oath he took, and thus the obligation to obey the order, tips the scales.
After returning from a concentration camp, Susanne finds a traumatized ex-soldier living in her apartment in bombed out Berlin. Together the two try to move past their experiences during WWII.
A woman struggles to raise her young son on her own in postwar Japan, finding companionship with a kind laborer while still hoping for the return of her missing husband.
A woman learns that one of her doctor husband's patients used to be the cellmate of her first husband, who died in prison years before.
Young lawyer Rebeka is given a case involving the murder of a production designer, and the main suspect is her childhood friend Jana. What first seems like a very straightforward case gradually reveals the dark sides, mysterious depths and stray ways of human nature.
At the end of WWII the Dutch resistance kills a German officer in front of the house of a Dutch family. Years after the war the young boy who witnessed the killing runs into the members of the resistance who committed the killing.
In the ruins of post-WWII Berlin, a twelve-year-old boy is left to his own devices in order to help provide for his family.
Lifelong hard work for the count makes the servant Anton a cripple. Everybody calls him Crooked Anton. When, after the end of the war, the land of the count gets divided amongst the farmers, Anton receives a piece and hopes to be able to work freely. But an old debt and intrigue keep Anton and his family from finding peace. The farmers of the village begin to discover their own power when Annegret, Anton's daughter, leaves. Is a new beginning possible for Anton? This film paints an impressive panorama of the development of a minor village in Mecklenburg from the end of the war to the uprising of 17 June 1953.
Three stories connected by the motifs of water and death told in neorealist style.
A melodramatic story of Lucia, who serves as a charwoman on the Podlogar family's rich farm, and makes a fuss among householder's sons, as she becomes pregnant with one of them. A decision on whether one should be forced into marriage with the pregnant charwoman and her child, ends tragically. Will Lucia be able to sustain psychological pressure, contempt and pity of the Podlogar brothers?
The film is based on a novel by Ivan Tavcar and was adapted for the screen by Andrej Hieng. It is set at the end of the 17th century in the area that is now Slovenia at a time of religious intolerance with Amandus, a Catholic priest, determined to persecute local Protestants.
When a U.S. Marine returns home from Afghanistan, he finds that the place he once called home is no better than the battlefields he fought on overseas. Accompanied by his best friend, he searches desperately for the whereabouts of his estranged son and wife. In their search, the two intercept a man carrying vital information about his family.
A post-WW2 story about the village largely involved in wine-making business. The peasants who claimed possessions of lands, woods, and churches after communist party seized the power hold a party where a member of so-called reactionary forces (kulaks, clergy and Axis collaborators) tries to break in and stop it.
The animated corpse of Moscow goes on after its inhabitants left. Filled with weeps and whispers of the mourning ghosts, torn apart with phone calls from distant countries and unfamiliar sounds, emotionally devastated and deserted, the city attempts to reconcile with its own voice.
What is the life of a Geisha like once her beauty has faded and she has retired? Kin has saved, and become a wealthy money-lender, spending her days coldly collecting debts. Even her best friends, fellow Geisha Tomi, Nobu, and Tamae, are now indebted to her. For all of them, the glamour of their young lives has passed; Tomi and Tamae have disappointing children. Kin has two former lovers who still pursue her; one she wants to see, and the other she doesn't. But even the one she remembers fondly, when he shows up, proves less than satisfactory.
A Holocaust survivor moves to Israel and experiences difficulty adjusting to life.
Three years after the Hiroshima bombing, a teenager helps a group of orphans to survive and find their new life.
Stuck in a mining town near Vladivostok in 1947 amongst Soviet exiles and Japanese POWs (Japanese prisoners remained in Siberia for years after the war had ended), the kids have to come up with something to keep them busy. Two friends, Valerka and Galia, play some peculiar, very dangerous games of their own amid the man-made wasteland of Suchan.