A blue-collar worker on New York's depressed waterfront finds his life changed after he saves a woman attempting suicide.
After killing a prison guard, convict Robert Stroud faces life imprisonment in solitary confinement. Driven nearly mad by loneliness and despair, Stroud's life gains new meaning when he happens upon a helpless baby sparrow in the exercise yard and nurses it back to health. Despite having only a third grade education, Stroud goes on to become a renowned ornithologist and achieves a greater sense of freedom and purpose behind bars than most people find in the outside world.
When petty criminal Luke Jackson is sentenced to two years in a Florida prison farm, he doesn't play by the rules of either the sadistic warden or the yard's resident heavy, Dragline, who ends up admiring the new guy's unbreakable will. Luke's bravado, even in the face of repeated stints in the prison's dreaded solitary confinement cell, "the box," make him a rebel hero to his fellow convicts and a thorn in the side of the prison officers.
The rise and inevitable fall of an amoral but naive young woman whose insouciant eroticism inspires lust and violence in those around her.
The life of a Russian physician and poet who, although married to another, falls in love with a political activist's wife and experiences hardship during World War I and then the October Revolution.
On the South Pacific island of Bora Bora, a young couple's love is threatened when the tribal chief declares the girl a sacred virgin.
In a picturesque Guangxi village, deaf Wang Jiakuan falls for Zhu Ling, who is already in love with someone else. Cai Yuzhen, visiting to find her brother, stays with Wang Jiakuan and falls for him. Zhu Ling, pregnant and locked in her room, is discovered by villagers who also learn Cai Yuzhen is mute. Heartbroken, Wang Jiakuan leaves but returns, and Zhu Ling tries to match him with Cai Yuzhen.
A successful and married black man contemplates having an affair with a white girl from work. He's quite rightly worried that the racial difference would make an already taboo relationship even worse.
In Manhattan’s Upper West Side, rival gangs of Polish-Americans and newly arrived Puerto Ricans clash for control of the neighborhood, even as two young members from opposite sides fall dangerously in love.
By day Emma is a good Amish girl, but by night she sneaks out with her Amish friend, Rebecca, and together they lead a double life, going to clubs, flirting with boys, and falling in love in the forbidden “English” world. When Emma accidentally witnesses a murder while out, her life and community is thrown into peril.
Today, you're more likely to go to prison in the United States than anywhere else in the world. So in the unfortunate case it should happen to you - this is the Survivors Guide to Prison.
Literature graduate Orlando begins a love affair with the Foreign Ministry official Anders. She follows him to Argentina. There she learns that he is already married.
Sam Bowden is a small-town corporate attorney. Max Cady is a tattooed, cigar-smoking, Bible-quoting, psychotic rapist. What do they have in common? 14 years ago, Sam was a public defender assigned to Max Cady's rape trial, and he made a serious error: he hid a document from his illiterate client that could have gotten him acquitted. Now, the cagey Cady has been released, and he intends to teach Sam Bowden and his family a thing or two about loss.
The new warden of a small prison farm in Arkansas tries to clean it up of corruption after initially posing as an inmate.
French secret service agent Josselin Beaumont is dispatched to take down African warlord N'Jala. But when his assignment is canceled, he's shocked to learn that his government is surrendering him to local authorities. He is given a mock trial and sentenced to 20 years of hard labor. But Beaumont escapes from prison and vows not only to avenge himself against his betrayers but also to finish his original assignment.
In 1943, while the Allies are bombing Berlin and the Gestapo is purging the capital of Jews, a dangerous love affair blossoms between two women – one a Jewish member of the underground, the other an exemplar of Nazi motherhood.
Olivier Assayas, Gus Van Sant, Wes Craven and Alfonso Cuaron are among the 20 distinguished directors who contribute to this collection of 18 stories, each exploring a different aspect of Parisian life. The colourful characters in this drama include a pair of mimes, a husband trying to choose between his wife and his lover, and a married man who turns to a prostitute for advice.
In May of 1983, a man turns 49 and, with his 17-year old son, journeys to the village in Baden that he left 40 years before. He wants to discover what happened then, the truth about an affair his mother had with a young Polish prisoner of war, how the authorities came to learn of it, the lovers' arrest, and the aftermath. While his son takes Polaroid photographs, he retraces the steps of his childhood and interviews those who should remember. The story is disclosed in flashbacks that focus on the lovers (Paulina and Stanislaus), on a jealous and conniving neighbor, and on Mayer, the local SS commander who wants to find a way out of inevitable consequences.
The relationships of two couples become complicated and deceitful when the man from one couple meets the woman of the other.
Three prisoners, Combe from Rijeka, Menso from Bosnia, and Bogart from Belgrade, escape from prison. Their final destination is the city of their dreams - Hamburg. They temporarily part ways and agree to meet at the train station in Zagreb. First, each of them goes to his hometown. From there on, we follow three separate stories. In the first, Combe, in the shady harbor district of Rijeka, tries to get back at his former crime partner, Mrvi, who turned him in to the police. In the second story, we witness Mensa's relationship with his wife Riza and their children in a small Bosnian village. The third story depicts Bogart's love affair with a young teacher in a Belgrade suburb. Afterwards, at the train station in Zagreb, Bogart finds out from the newspaper that the police caught his friends. At the last minute, he changes the original plan.