In the years before World War II, a tomboyish postulant at an Austrian abbey is hired as a governess in the home of a widowed naval captain with seven children and brings a new love of life and music into the home.
During the 17th century, a young woman is saved from execution and led to a priory to repent her sins but discovers a greater evil lies within.
In his delirium from his return from war, Francesco Bernardone goes back in his memories to the days when he lived for parties and carnal pleasures. He slowly recovers, but after the illness he is no longer the Francesco that everybody knew. Instead of spending hours in taverns, he meditates on the beauty of God's creatures, soon renouncing his riches and his family with plans to rebuild an abandoned church and his life.
Devout Christians Töre and Märeta send their only daughter, the virginal Karin, and their foster daughter, the unrepentant Ingeri, to deliver candles to a distant church. On their way through the woods, the girls encounter a group of savage goat herders who brutally rape and murder Karin as Ingeri remains hidden. When the killers unwittingly seek refuge in the farmhouse of Töre and Märeta, Töre plots a fitting revenge.
A British medical doctor fights a cholera outbreak in a small Chinese village, while also being trapped at home in a loveless marriage to an unfaithful wife.
A community of women lives in an old convent that falls apart. They never talk and strive to keep everything clean. One day, Irene realizes for the first time that there is much more beyond the routine she and her sisters keep doing over and over. Irene, following nature’s signs, starts a journey of reconnection with her own impulses and body to finally find her own voice.
When German knights invade Russia, Prince Alexander Nevsky must rally his people to resist the formidable force. After the Teutonic soldiers take over an eastern Russian city, Alexander stages his stand at Novgorod, where a major battle is fought on the ice of frozen Lake Chudskoe. While Alexander leads his outnumbered troops, two of their number, Vasili and Gavrilo, begin a contest of bravery to win the hand of a local maiden.
Viridiana is preparing to start her life as a nun when she is sent, somewhat unwillingly, to visit her aging uncle, Don Jaime. He supports her; but the two have met only once. Jaime thinks Viridiana resembles his dead wife. Viridiana has secretly despised this man all her life and finds her worst fears proven when Jaime grows determined to seduce his pure niece. Viridiana becomes undone as her uncle upends the plans she had made to join the convent.
A group of nuns raise an abandoned baby as their own inside a convent.
Ash, a handsome, shotgun-toting, chainsaw-armed department store clerk, is time warped backwards into England's Dark Ages, where he romances a beauty and faces legions of the undead.
Set in 13th century, a man locks himself in an oubliette, where he confronts human misery.
Three women are secretly plush prostitutes. They are successively called by a mysterious person to have sex with three different men and assuage their weird fantasies.
In the 1200s, a man arose whose ruthlessness was so feared, he emerged as the greatest empire builder ever known to mankind. Inspired by true historical events.
Three young Irish women struggle to maintain their spirits while they endure dehumanizing abuse as inmates of a Magdalene Sisters Asylum.
In a cloistered convent, Catalina, a young nun, witnesses a blasphemous act. From that moment on, she has to fight against an overwhelming temptation that takes hold of her.
A 17th-century nun becomes entangled in a forbidden lesbian affair with a novice. But it is Benedetta's shocking religious visions that threaten to shake the Church to its core.
During the 13th century, a small village fights for freedom in the frontier landscape of the Carpathian Mountains against Mongolian invaders.
In the early 1200s, Dogen brought Chinese Zen philosophy to Japan, and established the Japanese Zen school of Buddhism. He taught that a person was capable of realizing Buddhahood within himself, by way of Zazen. Zazen is extended hours of sitting and meditating to achieve a state of “Mu” (nothingness, or empty existence).
Professor Malcolm Evans leads his archaeological expedition into the Valley of Temples in southeast Sicily. His companion and former student, Liza Harris, is looking forward to her very first dig. But Liza feels a strange sympathy with the valley and her recurring nightmares seem strongly tied to the nearby ruins. She is drawn to the remains of a 16th Century convent and its grisly legend of crucifixion. The local villagers rise to protect the entombed secrets of their ancestors, as Liza's obsession with uncovering the truth takes her deeper into the forbidden ruins and further from sanity!
Don Juan Tenorio makes a bet with a friend as to which of them will commit more outrages in a year. He wins, killing twirty-two men and seducing seventy-two women. In the end, however, he is saved from damnation through a return to true belief and the love of a saintly woman, Doña Inés.