A solitary nurse bonds with a badly burned patient who survived an accident on an oil rig.
Wallace is an efficiency expert, managing the high-profile downsizing of a major auto parts factory. But when he is hired to evaluate a small moccasin factory which seems from another era, Wallace has to reconsider the rapid modernization he advocates, as he is confronted by the human faces such plans hurt.
Charles Price may have grown up with his father in the family shoe business in Northampton, central England, but he never thought that he would take his father's place. Charles has a chance encounter with the flamboyant drag queen cabaret singer Lola and everything changes.
After being compared to a dancing monkey by one of the factory owners, Wayne, a factory worker sets out to find an answer to a question that will decide his fate and those around him.
Sean Odkin loves to dance—much to his fathers distain. When the woman he loves cannot return his love, he goes in search of the only thing that can make him whole again—dancing.
An enterprising youngster in a slum wants his people to lead a life of dignity, but has to take on an ambitious capitalist, who only wants to dominate his field.
When a western Pennsylvania auto plant is acquired by a Japanese company, brokering auto worker Hunt Stevenson faces the tricky challenge of mediating the assimilation of two clashing corporate cultures. At one end is the Japanese plant manager and the sycophant who is angling for his position. At the other, a number of disgruntled long-time union members struggle with the new exigencies of Japanese quality control.
Fed up with mistreatment at the hands of both management and union brass, and coupled with financial hardships on each man's end, three auto assembly line workers hatch a plan to rob a safe at union headquarters.
In nineteenth-century Łódź, Poland, three friends want to make a lot of money by building and investing in a textile factory. An exceptional portrait of rapid industrial expansion is shown through the eyes of one Polish town.
Iris is a shy and dowdy young woman stuck in a dead-end job at a match factory, who dreams of finding love at the local dancehall. Finding herself pregnant after a one-night stand and abandoned by the father, Iris finally decides the time has come to get even and she begins to plot her revenge.
A Finnish man goes to the city to find a job after the mine where he worked is closed and his father commits suicide.
A Czech immigrant in 1960s America escapes into musicals while working long hours in poverty. Struggling with hereditary blindness, she is determined to secure her son’s future and will sacrifice everything to ensure he receives the operation that could spare him from her fate.
A wealthy, self-absorbed Rome socialite is racked by guilt over the death of her young son. As a way of dealing with her grief and finding meaning in her life, she decides to devote her time and money to the city’s poor and sick. Her newfound, single-minded activism leads to conflicts with her husband and questions about her sanity.
A dark comedy about the only female employee in the warehouse of a sausage company who forms an unlikely bond with a stranger that throws both their lives into disarray, leaving them forever changed.
A 22-year-old factory worker lets loose on the weekends: drinking, brawling, and dating two women, one of whom is older and married.
Filip buys an 8mm movie camera when his first child is born. Because it's the first camera in town, he's named official photographer by the local Party boss. His horizons widen when he is sent to regional film festivals with his first works but his focus on movie making also leads to domestic strife and philosophical dilemmas.
Marion is a factory worker who hopes to trade the assembly line for a beautiful penthouse apartment. Mark Whitney, a wealthy and influential lawyer, can make her dreams come true, but, there is only one problem; he will give her everything except a marriage proposal. Will this affair ever lead to marriage?
A white and a blue collar worker fall in love during the 1980 strike at FIAT that marked the end for labor movement in Italy.
Kate's boyfriend dies in a fire after a fight over the couple's unborn child. After Kate is involved in a near-drowning accident a few years later, she wakes up on-shore to find that she's living two days before her boyfriend's fatal fire.
Andula, an innocent Czech girl from a factory town, is desperately in search of love. She believes she's found it when she beds Milda, a charming young musician visiting from Prague. Milda, however, is only looking for a casual encounter, and leaves town assuming he'll never see Andula again. But when Andula doesn't hear from him, she packs up and heads to Prague, to the surprise of Milda and his parents.