In the time of the Qing Dynasty, the Emperor Yongzheng created a secret army known as the Guillotines. It was the job of the Guillotines to protect the Emperor by killing anyone who posed a threat to him or his rule. After 348 successful missions to eliminate their target, the 349th assignment proves to be their last.
Four independent stories set in modern China about random acts of violence.
An investigatory story that centers around an Assistant Commissioner of Police, Ratheesh Vasudevan who uncovers the mystery behind the illicit killing of a young communist, Anoop.
This film is the first of a two-part historical and biographical portrait of the communist politician and anti-fascist Ernst Thälmann. In early November 1918, Ernst Thälmann is an unwilling soldier serving on the western front. As the revolutionary movement at home is threatened by the betrayal of the Social Democrats and fissures in the working class, Thälmann calls on his fellow soldiers to put down their weapons and unite with the workers in the communist struggle at home. Thälmann’s qualms about which side he is fighting on continue, but when the local police attempt to prevent a shipment of provisions and supplies from reaching the people in Petrograd, he intervenes and the ship is unloaded. With this moment of clarity, Thälmann continues to follow his political convictions and joins the workers at the Hamburg uprising in October 1923.
This film is the second of a two-part historical and biographical portrait of the communist politician and anti-fascist Ernst Thälmann. Autumn, 1918: Somewhere on Germany’s western front, Ernst Thälmann, age twenty-four, is calling on his fellow soldiers to put down their guns and join him in the communist struggle at home. When Hamburg’s Police Commissioner blocks a much-needed food shipment to the workers of Petrograd, Ernst battles to see it allowed through. Until his murder on August 18, 1944, Ernst remained true to his political convictions in the face of many setbacks.
18-year-old Shengnan is invited to a mysterious party by her cousin. Upon arrival, Shengnan finds herself surrounded by greasy middle-aged men, with the exception of Jianguo, who is different. Shengnan and Jianguo decide to bail on the party, embarking on a night of adventures in the adult world.
Fritz Weineck, a worker′s son from Halle, loves music – and dreams to make a living out of it one day. When his friend Alfons, a World War I veteran, gives him a trumpet as a gift, Fritz seems to come closer to fulfil his dream. But then, Fritz realizes that after the end of the German empire workers still have to desperately fight for their rights, and decides to use his instrument for political means: At a meeting of militant workers, he uses his trumpet as a signal horn. But Fritz suffers a severe setback when a comrade dies in the fight for an arms depot because of his fault.
The dramatisation of a Communist Terrorist assault on a rural Federation of Malaya Police station at Bukit Kepong, Muar, Johor, of then Malaya, on February 23, 1950, during the height of the First Malayan Emergency, 1948-1960.
A group of communist guerillas encounter jealousy and rivalry among themselves because of the presence of the female compatriot while one of their members plots to desert their band.
The tight-knight community of a remote mountain village come to know and understand a strange, mute woman's past in the wake of her husband's death.
A voyage between a woman searching for the meaning of life and a man holding a book of poems on the longest river of Mainland China.
Spanish photographer Francesc Boix, imprisoned in the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp, works in the SS Photographic Service. Between 1943 and 1945, he hides, with the help of other prisoners, thousands of negatives, with the purpose of showing the freed world the atrocities committed by the Nazis, exhaustively documented. He will be a key witness during the Nuremberg Trials.
When all four of his children cancel their yearly visits, a widower travels to the far corners of the country to see them and discovers the hidden sides of their lives.
In post-WWII Hong Kong, unhappily married Carol has an affair with Paul. Her physician husband Walter discovers it and presents her with a choice: travel with him to China (where he will fight a cholera epidemic) or face the scandal of a public divorce. She persuades him to reconsider and he proposes an alternative. If Paul's wife will agree to a divorce and he marries Carol within one week Walter will obtain a quiet divorce. Carol presents Walter's 'deal' to Paul, who regretfully declines, citing respect for his wife.Carol sees as her only choice to accompany Walter to the village, where she meets booze-soaked Tim. He soon introduces her to nuns at the local hospital-convent and Carol begins to re-evaluate her self-absorbed life and character. Working at the convent, Carol learns she is pregnant. She tells Walter she's unsure who is the father and he regrets her honesty. Shortly after, Walter contracts cholera and dies. Carol returns to Hong Kong and an uncertain future.
A railroad worker in China in 1941 leads a team of freedom fighters against the Japanese in order to get food for the poor.
Between the two World Wars, Yugoslavia was ruled by a monarchy. This movie explores the difficulties faced by a Communist Party organizer under that regime when an order goes out to kill anyone threatening the current regime. At first he is willing to leave the country, but his experience of the situation of workers moves him to stay. Despite efforts of captors to help him escape, he refuses, and dies a martyr's death.
An underground or unsanctioned picture from Beijing cinematographer Wu Di. A ballerina for the Beijing Dance Troop gains an opportunity to move to America. She attends an interview with a U.S Consulate officer to get the visa her fiancé, and is approved. Just as the plane is preparing to take off, the fiancé realizes that there will be nothing for him in America and that he might even become an impediment to his fiancé's success, so he wishes her luck and runs off the plane. The problem is; he now cant go home or he will lose face when people hear he was too afraid to go, so he fakes it, calling from Payphones located across from his family house in Beijing and pretending that he is calling from New York.
Roy and his friends expose the misdeeds of Sahadevan, a corrupt politician, and soon the friends are found murdered. Later, when Roy dies of an illness, Jayan discovers Roy and Sahadevan's past.
When Duke Evans, out of work NSA analyst, is evicted from his home he moves his family to his grandfather's old cabin. However here they are also threatened when a hellish cyber-attack is unleashed on the US rendering anything with a computer chip useless. He must now keep his family alive, fight off would be thieves and a newly corrupted government and ultimately make the hardest decision of his life- to survive. Written by Patterson, Matt (V)