Prologue

Oskar Matzerath is a very unusual boy. Refusing to leave the womb until promised a tin drum by his mother, Agnes, Oskar is reluctant to enter a world he sees as filled with hypocrisy and injustice, and vows on his third birthday to never grow up. Miraculously, he gets his wish. As the Nazis rise to power in Danzig, Oskar wills himself to remain a child, beating his tin drum incessantly and screaming in protest at the chaos surrounding him.

Maria marries a young soldier in the last days of World War II, only for him to go missing in the war. She must rely on her beauty and ambition to navigate the difficult post-war years alone.

Photographer Robert Kincaid wanders into the life of housewife Francesca Johnson for four days in the 1960s.

Over the course of five social occasions, a committed bachelor must consider the notion that he may have discovered love.

Following an unexpected tragedy, child psychologist Malcolm Crowe meets a nine year old boy named Cole Sear, who is hiding a dark secret.

Middle-aged suburban husband Richard abruptly tells his wife, Maria, that he wants a divorce. As Richard takes up with a younger woman, Maria enjoys a night on the town with her friends and meets a younger man. As the couple and those around them confront a seemingly futile search for what they've lost -- love, excitement, passion -- this classic American independent film explores themes of aging and alienation.

The spoiled daughter of a Georgia plantation owner conducts a tumultuous romance with a cynical profiteer during the American Civil War and Reconstruction Era.

A poet falls in love with an art student, who gravitates to his bohemian lifestyle — and his love of heroin. Hooked as much on one another as they are on the drug, their relationship alternates between states of oblivion, self-destruction, and despair.

After her much older husband forces a move to a suburban retirement community, Pippa Lee engages in a period of reflection and finds herself heading toward a quiet nervous breakdown.

Unemotional, restrained cinematographic poem, situated in a wintry and poor suburb of Tehran. A man is dismissed and his lack of prospects for the future make him decide to seek his happiness abroad. He leaves his wife and child behind and for a long time nothing is heard of him. Then a stranger turns up, a car mechanic looking for a job. The attractive single mother can’t resist his attentions. Very subtly, a struggle ensues that reflects that of a whole generation of young doubting Iranians who may want to leave the country, but hardly know how to start.

Outside the Australian town of Jindabyne, local man Stuart Kane is on a fishing trip with friends when they discover the body of a murdered girl.

A married couple looking for an apartment move in with the husband's co-worker, a widower. The husband becomes jealous of the widower and his wife.

The life of a married Munich technical draftsman with a son.

After the death of her abusive father, lonely librarian Martha finds herself caught up in a strange, sadomasochistic relationship with a monstrous husband whom she begins to suspect may be trying to murder her.

A troubled Southern man talks to his suicidal sister's psychiatrist about their family history and falls in love with her (and New York City) in the process.

In 1920s China, 19-year-old Songlian becomes a concubine of a powerful lord and is forced to compete with his three wives for the privileges gained.

A married man gets blackmailed by a degenerate couple after having a one-night threesome with them.

An aged father and his younger, mentally challenged son have been working hard every day to keep the bathhouse running for a motley group of regular customers. When his elder son, who left years ago to seek his fortune in the southern city of Shenzhen, abruptly returns one day, it once again puts under stress the long-broken father-son ties. Presented as a light-hearted comedy, Shower explores the value of family, friendship, and tradition.

In 1931, a young soldier deserts from the army and falls into a country farm, where he is welcomed by the owner due to his political ideas. Manolo has four daughters, Fernando likes all of them and they like him, so he has to decide which one to love.

Charlie Kaufman is a confused L.A. screenwriter overwhelmed by feelings of inadequacy, sexual frustration, self-loathing, and by the screenwriting ambitions of his freeloading twin brother Donald. While struggling to adapt "The Orchid Thief," by Susan Orlean, Kaufman's life spins from pathetic to bizarre. The lives of Kaufman, Orlean's book, become strangely intertwined as each one's search for passion collides with the others'.