Amid the opulent teahouses of 1930s Hong Kong, a humble courtesan and the wayward scion of a wealthy family fall in love and embrace death by suicide pact. Fifty years later, her ghost returns to find him, drawing a young contemporary couple into her quest to rekindle a passion that may be as illusory as time itself.
Having lost his job and the company he built, a 36-year-old man at rock bottom goes on a wistful solo trip to Japan in search of the love he left behind.
A naïve young tax collector for the imperial government winds up spending the night in a haunted temple. There he falls in love with a beautiful woman who, unfortunately, is dead. With the aid of a powerful Daoist Swordsman, he must defeat undead hordes, overcome a sinister Tree Demoness, and descend to the pits of hell, to fight for the spirit he loves.
After losing both her parents, Failan emmigrates to Korea to seek her only remaining relatives. Once she reaches Korea, she finds out that her relatives have moved to Canada well over a year ago. Desperate to stay and make a living in Korea, Failan is forced to have an arranged marriage through a match-making agency.
A-yuan and A-yun are both from the small mining town of Jio-fen. They move to Taipei, where A-yuan is an apprentice by day and goes to night school, and A-yun works as a helper at a tailors. Everyone thinks they are meant for each other, and so do they. They fail to see time and fate are beyond their control.
Five shorts reveal a fictional Hong Kong in 2025, depicting a dystopian city where residents and activists face crackdowns under iron-fisted rule.
A look at what goes on backstage during the last broadcast of America's most celebrated radio show, where singing cowboys Dusty and Lefty, a country music siren, and a host of others hold court.
In a near future, a lonely man is addicted to a product called ‘’Best Friend” which offers him perfect virtual friends.
A mischievous snake who assumes human form interferes with the romance between her reptilian sister and a hapless man.
A woman with a seemingly ideal life, Siu Man is abandoned by her husband partly due to her fear of intimacy. After several life crises, she decides to reboot her life by taking over her father’s restaurant. Siu Man eventually finds herself attracted to her new chef, a free spirit who treats cooking as serious philosophy. Tired of the shackles she placed on herself, Siu Man embarks on a journey of self-discovery and sexual liberation.
Aga, a band singer, returns to Hengchun with frustration. Tomoko is a Japanese model assigned to organize a local warm-up band for the Japanese super star beach concert. Together with other five ordinary Hengchun residents who were not expected to be great or anything, they formed an impossible band.
The year is Seitoku 2 (1712), and Japan has a new ruler. But Ietsugu, the 7th Tokugawa shogun, is only four years old. The power vacuum this creates has Edo Castle roiling in political intrigue and personal positioning of all kinds.
Fenella, a poor Italian girl, falls in love with a Spanish nobleman, but their affair triggers a revolution and national catastrophe.
A depressing tale dealing with five women involved with prostitution and the effects it has on their love and family lives. High class or low class, each is just as sad.
In 208 A.D., in the final days of the Han Dynasty, shrewd Prime Minster Cao convinced the fickle Emperor Han the only way to unite all of China was to declare war on the kingdoms of Xu in the west and East Wu in the south. Thus began a military campaign of unprecedented scale. Left with no other hope for survival, the kingdoms of Xu and East Wu formed an unlikely alliance.
A Hong Kong detective suffers a fatal accident involving a mysterious medallion and is transformed into an immortal warrior with superhuman powers.
Pierrot escapes his boring society and travels from Paris to the Mediterranean Sea with Marianne, a girl chased by hit-men from Algeria. They lead an unorthodox life, always on the run.
After his mother’s death, Zucchini is befriended by a kind police officer, Raymond, who accompanies him to his new foster home filled with other orphans his age. There, with the help of his newfound friends, Zucchini eventually learns to trust and love as he searches for a new family of his own.
Charlie Simms is a student at a private preparatory school who comes from a poor family. To earn the money for his flight home to Gresham, Oregon for Christmas, Charlie takes a job over Thanksgiving looking after retired U.S. Army officer Lieutenant Colonel Frank Slade, a cantankerous middle-aged man who lives with his niece and her family.
After a chaotic night of rioting in a marginal suburb of Paris, three young friends, Vinz, Hubert and Saïd, wander around unoccupied waiting for news about the state of health of a mutual friend who has been seriously injured when confronting the police.
With a serial strangler on the loose, a bookkeeper wanders around town searching for the vigilante group intent on catching the killer.
Germany in the autumn of 1957: Lola, a seductive cabaret singer-prostitute exults in her power as a temptress of men, but she wants out—she wants money, property, and love. Pitting a corrupt building contractor against the new straight-arrow building commissioner, Lola launches an outrageous plan to elevate herself in a world where everything, and everyone, is for sale. Shot in childlike candy colors, Fassbinder’s homage to Josef von Sternberg’s classic The Blue Angel stands as a satiric tribute to capitalism.
Diane and Dora are two prostitutes who begin to rebel against their lot in life. Meanwhile, in another part of town, a murderer is at large.
Beautiful young housewife Séverine Serizy cannot reconcile her masochistic fantasies with her everyday life alongside dutiful husband Pierre. When her lovestruck friend Henri mentions a secretive high-class brothel run by Madame Anais, Séverine begins to work there during the day under the name Belle de Jour. But when one of her clients grows possessive, she must try to go back to her normal life.
Harvard graduate James Averill serves as the sheriff of prosperous Jackson County, Wyoming, standing at the center of a conflict between impoverished immigrants and affluent cattle farmers. Politically connected ranchers enlist mercenary Nathan Champion—who is also vying for the affections of local madam Ella Watson—to combat the immigrant uprising. As tensions escalate, both Averill and Champion start to question their decisions.
A smooth-talking ad executive attributes his remarkable success with women to his ability to manipulate their emotions from the moment he first meets them. When his teenage nephew drops in for a visit, he soon learns that his approach isn't as foolproof as he thought when he attempts to teach the boy how to pick up women.
The manager of a whorehouse is in love with a young woman who works as a maid, there. He believes that his feelings are reciprocated, but the woman chooses instead to marry a rich man who has also been courting her. Punctuating the story of this romance are a magician's show, and an earthquake.
Meet Joel Goodson, an industrious, college-bound 17-year-old and a responsible, trustworthy son. However, when his parents go away and leave him home alone in the wealthy Chicago suburbs with the Porsche at his disposal he quickly decides he has been good for too long and it is time to enjoy himself. After an unfortunate incident with the Porsche Joel must raise some cash, in a risky way.
After saving a Black Panther from some racist cops, a black male prostitute goes on the run from "the man" with the help of the ghetto community and some disillusioned Hells Angels.
A passionate telling of the story of Sada Abe, a woman whose affair with her master led to an obsessive and ultimately destructive sexual relationship.
A young couple escapes Ireland, dreaming of a new life during the land giveaway in Oklahoma. As they struggle to survive against betrayal and harsh winter conditions, they must fend off her parents who are determined to bring her back home.
When a notorious German serial killer is captured after committing some of the most heinous acts against humanity ever imaginable, a farmer and police officer from a sleepy rural community on the outskirts of Berlin is drawn into the case as he searches for the answers to a murder that has shaken his tight-knit community.
The three friends Ertan, Kemal and Mehdi live in Kiel. They are foreigners, "Kanaks", as they proudly call themselves. For them, this term is an expression of their attitude to life. The trio keeps their heads above water with small-time crooks, but over time they are drawn deeper and deeper into a maelstrom of violence and crime. On a whim, Erkan acts as the protector of two prostitutes and makes enemies of two unscrupulous pimps. After a failed robbery, Ertan ends up in prison for a short time and Kemal is deported to Turkey. However, the two proud "Kanaks" don't let this get them down, on the contrary: together, the friends now want to build a drug air bridge between Istanbul and Germany. But the dream of quick money ends in death and grief for Kemal and Ertan.
In three separate segments, set respectively in 1966, 1911, and 2005, three love stories unfold between three sets of characters, under three different periods of Taiwanese history and governance.
Two souls arrive in a small town, one on vacation, the other to meet a lover. They spend the most magical dream-like days of their lives in that town... with each other.
Jolana (18) is an object of her step-father's desire. She is unable to cope, especially when her own mother turns a blind eye. Those events are heavily paid for when she finds herself working in a brothel. Her inability to cope raise a question: What is it she actually wants? Are her dreams of escaping really better than the reality she finds herself in?
A tale of near Biblical proportions, telling the story of Dayavan, a heroic do-gooder who dedicates his life to helping those less fortunate then himself.
In the years before World War II, a penniless Japanese child is torn from her family to work as a maid in a geisha house.
The murderous, backwoods Firefly family take to the road to escape the vengeful Sheriff Wydell, who is not afraid of being as ruthless as his target.
Wyatt and Billy, two Harley-riding hippies, complete a drug deal in Southern California and decide to travel cross-country in search of spiritual truth.