After a series of traumatic childhood events, a psychosomatically deaf, dumb and blind boy becomes a master pinball player and the object of a religious cult.
What would your family reminiscences about dad sound like if he had been an early supporter of Hitler’s, a leader of the notorious SA and the Third Reich’s minister in charge of Slovakia, including its Final Solution? Executed as a war criminal in 1947, Hanns Ludin left behind a grieving widow and six young children, the youngest of whom became a filmmaker. It's a fascinating, maddening, sometimes even humorous look at what the director calls "a typical German story." (Film Forum)
An American journalist arrives in Berlin just after the end of World War Two. He becomes involved in a murder mystery surrounding a dead GI who washes up at a lakeside mansion during the Potsdam negotiations between the Allied powers. Soon his investigation connects with his search for his married pre-war German lover.
After returning from a concentration camp, Susanne finds an ex-soldier living in her apartment. Together the two try to move past their experiences during WWII.
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.
Anzukko (Little Peach) is the daughter of a successful writer. She turns down each one of her suitors, until she marries a beginning writer named Ryokichi. Their life quickly sinks into despair.
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.
Former P.O.W. Jack Calgrove moves Heaven and Earth to be reunited with his children following the Civil War. After returning home, Jack discovers that his wife has tragically died and his children, presumed to be orphans, are heading deep into the West on a train crossing enemy lines, with the intent of being placed into new homes. Calgrove and another soldier team up with a troop of Native American sharpshooters and a freed slave as they try to stop the train.
When a young boy comes in to see a doctor abourt a red mark on his face, the doctor's wife welcomes him into the consulting room instead. As they talk, she offers him something to eat and then notes that his manner of eating is just like that of her previous husband, who died in prison many years earlier. It turns out that the young man had been his cell mate for a year, and he tells her the story of how her husband died. She then remembers (in flashbacks) how she had helped her first husband rid himself of his sexual repression, and how she had promised him she would marry her current husband if she were widowed. It seems her doctor-husband was a man who could remain untouched through any political climate, and was much admired by her first husband. Now that her memories have been awakened by the young man's account, she ignores the repeated phone calls of her current husband and decides to rid this young man of his own sexual repressions.
A story about a family after the Second World War. The petty bourgeois cashier Karl Weber of Berlin observes from a distance how his son Ernst participates in the building of a new socialist society. Karl does not understand Ernst's visions, instead he confides in his other son Harry. However, Harry becomes involved in illicit business and Karl quickly realizes that it would be best to join his son Ernst in the citizen-owned factory.
Isabella, the daughter of the noble York family, is enrolled in an all-girls academy to be groomed into a dame worthy of nobility. However, she has given up on her future, seeing the prestigious school as nothing more than a prison from the outside world. Her family notices her struggling in her lessons and decides to hire Violet Evergarden to personally tutor her under the guise of a handmaiden. At first, Isabella treats Violet coldly. Violet seems to be able to do everything perfectly, leading Isabella to assume that she was born with a silver spoon. After some time, Isabella begins to realize that Violet has had her own struggles and starts to open up to her. Isabella soon reveals that she has lost contact with her beloved younger sister, whom she yearns to see again. Having experienced the power of words through her past clientele, Violet asks if Isabella wishes to write a letter to Taylor. Will Violet be able to help Isabella convey her feelings to her long-lost sister?
World War II is over and Heinrich, a young German boy, influenced by the Russians, starts to act according to Communist principles in a small German village.
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.
With delicate, unobtrusive strokes, Naruse evokes both the humor and bitterness of his characters’ dilemmas, in this bleak, compelling poignant portrait of a quartet of aging geishas contemplating their troubles with men and money.
The battle-scarred hero of the Greek Revolution, Giannos "Astrapogiannos", returns home after the end of the blood-soaked War of Independence, only to find himself in a new conflict, as he locks horns with a ruthless local Kodjabashis.
Eiko seeks out Miyoharu, a geisha, and asks to be her apprentice. When she is ready to receive clients, both women want the right to refuse certain men.
Two brothers—Chul-ho, an accountant with a toothache and a pregnant wife, and Yong-ho, an unemployed ex-soldier wounded in battle—navigate life in post-war Korea.
Freddie, a volatile, heavy-drinking veteran who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, finds some semblance of a family when he stumbles onto the ship of Lancaster Dodd, the charismatic leader of a new "religion" he forms after World War II.