Authors Lord Byron, Mary Shelley (née Godwin) and Percy Shelley get together for some philosophical discussions, but the situation soon deteriorates into mind games, drugs, and sex. It is a fictionalization of the summer that Lord Byron and the Shelleys, together with Lord Byron's ex-lover Claire Clairmont and his Doctor John Polidori, spent in the isolated Villa Diodati by Lake Geneva. It is there they devise a contest to adduce the best horror story to kill the dullness of summer. It is also there that one of the world's most famous books was given life—Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.
In the summer of 1816, Percy Shelley, his mistress Mary, and her stepsister Claire visit Lord Byron at Lake Geneva. Byron challenges each to write a horror story, and Mary begins her novel, Frankenstein. She imagines the monster becoming real, and for the next six years, as tragedy befalls those around her, she believes the personification of her imagination is the cause. Against this backdrop, Claire has Byron's baby then is estranged from him and barred from her daughter. Byron and Percy continue their friendship, the one self-centered and decadent, the other wildly idealistic. The Shelleys take up residence near Pisa.
The love affair between poet Percy Shelley and Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin resulted in the creation of an immortal novel, “Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus.”
Living on an estate on the shores of Lake Geneva, Lord Byron is visited by Percy and Mary Shelley. Together with Byron's lover Claire Clairmont, and aided by hallucinogenic substances, they devise an evening of ghoulish tales. However, when confronted by horrors, ostensibly of their own creation, it becomes difficult to tell apparition from reality.
A Praia do Pecado
Paris, 1884. Bella Fontanges, a renowned ballerina, is married to Georges de Segar. But after just a few years together, the couple slowly sinks into weariness. Bella has forgotten what happiness used to taste like. Then a mysterious squire appears. Aware of the couple's faltering situation, he makes Bella and Georges a most astonishing proposal: he claims to be able to separate Good from Evil in Georges. Reluctant at first, the couple eventually agrees to play along. But it's not long before they realize that in Georges, it's Evil that has prevailed.
Jerry Lewis plays an Ohio optometrist who has a six-year old daughter with epilepsy. He fights to get the FDA to approve a drug (at that time only available in England) for use in the U.S.
William Kell, the keeper of a lighthouse on a lonely stretch of coastline, marries cabaret dancer Eileen. His young wife, however, goes on to have an affair with Henry Cass, the handsome assistant later taken on by her husband; when she then begins to flirt with a stranger who is rescued from the wreck of a motor-launch, a chain of shocking events is set in motion...
Locomotive
A group of friends from a summer village. Over the past few years, they've been seeing each other less and less. Bruna invites them to lunch to celebrate her birthday, in the village, in the place where they have shared so many moments together, to relive it once more, perhaps for the last time.
By Heart follows Catherine as she tries to figure out a way to hold on to her American roots and identity, after being brought to Taiwan due to her parents' separation, by resisting an indoctrinating Confucian text she has to memorize at school.
An uncompromising and controversial short set in the Scandinavian suburbia on the hottest day of the summer. A sister reluctantly babysits her little brother. Two young boys catch her attention, and she makes a crucial decision.
Heli Valkonen is desperately in love with her husband. But Matti is just not in the mood. He is only interested in playing computer games, dressed in worn out fleece pants. For him, a shoulder massage is the highest form of intimacy. When subtle hints, nice words and fetching clothes won't help, Heli resorts in direct, and increasingly direct action - in vain.
A young, Polish woman is forced to choose between her family and her career as an actress.
A female worker in Socialist Hungary gains the acceptance of her male colleagues.
A journalist in a Bucharest publication, is the accidental witness of the street arrest of a communist. It intervenes in the defense of the young man, who manages to escape, and is arrested. He is obliged to look for the missing woman.
In a slum set to be demolished, dramas are played out among the picturesque slum dwellers, including a young couple who, denounced by the police, are forced to leave home.
Processo all'amore
Cinderella has faith her dreams of a better life will come true. With help from her loyal mice friends and a wave of her Fairy Godmother's wand, Cinderella's rags are magically turned into a glorious gown and off she goes to the Royal Ball. But when the clock strikes midnight, the spell is broken, leaving a single glass slipper... the only key to the ultimate fairy-tale ending!
A beautiful and mysterious woman helps an inept scam artist get his game together... but is their meeting purely coincidence?