The Fire Within

Lester Burnham, a depressed suburban father in a mid-life crisis, decides to turn his hectic life around after developing an infatuation with his daughter's attractive friend.

Clint is a dead man who lives alone in a frozen tundra. However, this isolation cannot bring either evasion or peace. One night, he begins a journey where he must confront his dreams, memories, and visions, crossing the darkness into the light.

Twelve episodic tales in the life of a Parisian woman and her slow descent into prostitution.

In the carefree days before World War I, introverted Austrian author Jules strikes up a friendship with the exuberant Frenchman Jim and both men fall for the impulsive and beautiful Catherine.

A small group of French students are studying Mao, trying to find out their position in the world and how to change the world to a Maoistic community using terrorism.

A recently widowed American begins an anonymous sexual relationship with a young Parisian woman.

Pierre Lachenay is a well-known publisher and lecturer, married to Franca and father of Sabine. He starts a love affair with air hostess Nicole, which Pierre is hiding, but he cannot stay away from her.

Left to her own devices during an August heatwave, a seven-year-old wild child and her companion have an adventure filled with squirt guns, cicadas and rain dances.

Louise, who has just written a novel, comes to Paris to meet with a potential publisher. While in the city, she stays with her older sister, Martine, who in many ways is the exact opposite of Louise: she lives in a fashionable neighborhood, is cold to others, and has snobby friends, while Louise lives in a small town and is thoroughly unpretentious. Louise's apparent happiness -- and similarities to their mother -- gradually gets on Martine's nerves.

An almost bombproof method of staying single is called "speed dating". 18 people participate in such an event. Nine men and nine women are sitting opposite each other in order to sell optimally under the pressure of time and to find a partner. They are looking for a date - and have nothing else in common. They talk about allergies, cappuccino, consumer behavior, buses and designer clothes: the list of serious embarrassments is long. Yet none of the lonely hearts has given up the hope of romance.

Five years after their summer together in Barcelona, Xavier, William, Wendy, Martine and Isabelle reunite.

Marie, who works as a successful door-to-door encyclopedia salesperson, has been married to her husband Francois for 12 years and has a two-year-old son. Though she is relatively content with her life, she feels something is wanting. Enter 50-year old African-American Bill. Initially she is annoyed by his insouciance, but she finds that she is irresistibly attracted to him. Soon the two are in the midst of sordid illicit affair. She knows little about her new lover, and he seems uninterested in learning about her, but the long sessions of lovemaking are something else entirely. Feeling out of control, Marie is increasingly repelled by her own actions. Psychologically, she struggles to reconcile her torrid encounters with Bill and mundane domestic chores such as bathing her son. Moreover, she finds herself incapable of hiding her adulterous behavior, rather she comes home with scratches and hickeys all over her body, to the devastation Francois.

A lonely Gravedigger falls in love with a female corpse, causing tension between a village's priest who wrongfully accuses him of necrophilia.

In 1980, the black Falashas in Ethiopia are recognised as genuine Jews and are secretly carried to Israel. The day before the transport the son of a Jewish mother dies. In his place and with his name (Schlomo) she takes a Christian 9-year-old boy.

Erika Kohut, a sexually repressed piano teacher living with her domineering mother, meets a young man who starts romantically pursuing her.

A West Texas single mother wins the lottery and squanders it just as fast, leaving behind a world of heartbreak. Years later, with her charm running out and nowhere to go, she fights to rebuild her life and find redemption.

In 1970s Hollywood, Detective Philip Marlowe tries to help a friend who is accused of murdering his wife.

The wife of an American doctor suddenly vanishes in Paris. To find her, he navigates a puzzling web of language, locale, laissez-faire cops, triplicate-form filling bureaucrats and a defiant, mysterious waif who knows more than she tells.

The lives of several individuals intertwine as they go about their lives in their own unique ways, engaging in acts which society as a whole might find disturbing in a desperate search for human connection.

A poetic story about the first love of the village girl Natasha, loyal to the memory of the deceased fiancé. In peacetime, the heroine's fiancé blew up on a land mine that remained on the collective farm field since the war, and her life turned into a nightmare. But sooner or later, dreams end and the world opens again. Pregnant Natasha goes to the institutions, seeking to be signed with the father of the unborn child who died tragically. At the end, after long ordeals, she comes to the conclusion that writing in the marriage book will not change anything in her life.