Spain in the 1930s is the place to be for a man of action like Robert Jordan. There is a civil war going on and Jordan—who has joined up on the side that appeals most to idealists of that era—has been given a high-risk assignment up in the mountains. He awaits the right time to blow up a crucial bridge in order to halt the enemy's progress.
Engineer Jake Holman arrives aboard the gunboat USS San Pablo, assigned to patrol a tributary of the Yangtze in the middle of exploited and revolution-torn 1926 China. His iconoclasm and cynical nature soon clash with the 'rice-bowl' system which runs the ship and the uneasy symbiosis between Chinese and foreigner on the river. Hostility towards the gunboat's presence reaches a climax when the boat must crash through a river-boom and rescue missionaries upriver at China Light Mission.
Enchanted by the idea of locating treasure buried by Captain Flint, Squire Trelawney, Dr. Livesey and Jim Hawkins charter a sailing voyage to a Caribbean island. Unfortunately, a large number of Flint's old pirate crew are aboard the ship, including Long John Silver.
Since his beloved violin was broken, Nasser-Ali Khan, one of the most renowned musicians of his day, has lost all taste for life. Finding no instrument worthy of replacing it, he decides to confine himself to bed to await death.
Richard Dadier is a teacher at North Manual High School, an inner-city school where many of the pupils frequently engage in anti-social behavior. Dadier makes various attempts to engage the students' interest in education, challenging both the school staff and the pupils. He is subjected to violence as well as duplicitous schemes.
When an itinerant reluctantly returns home to help his sickly mother run her shop, they're both tempted to turn to crime to help make ends meet.
Middle-aged businesswoman Paula Tessier rejects the advances of her client's amusing 25-year-old son, Philip Van der Besh, but reconsiders when her longtime philandering partner begins yet another casual affair with a younger woman. She soon learns that May-December romances with older women are frowned upon in society.
The story focuses on high school girl Nagisa Yukiai who lives in a seaside town. She has believed her grandmother's story that spirits dwell in words and they are called "kotodama" (word spirit). One day, she strays into a mini FM station that has not been used for years. As an impulse of the moment, she tries to talk like a DJ using the facility. But her voice accidentally broadcasted reaches someone she has never expected.
A woman in Pakistan sentenced to death for falling in love becomes a rare survivor of the country's harsh judicial system.
In Thebes in ancient Greece, King Oedipus kills his father and marries his mother Jocasta, having two sons - Eteocles and Polyneices - and two daughters - Ismene and Antigone. King Oedipus dies a beggar in the exile after gouging out his own eye, and Eteocle agrees to reign in Thebes in alternating years with Polynices. However, he refuses to resign after the first year and Polynieces raises an army and attacks Thebes, and they kill each other. The ruler of Thebes Creon decrees that Eleocles should have an honorable burial while the body of the traitor Polyneices should be left on the battlefield to be eaten by the jackals and vultures. However, Antigone, who was betrothed to Creon's surviving son Haemon, defies Creon's orders and buries her brother. When Creon is reported of the attitude of Antigone, he sentences her to be placed in a tomb alive. Antigone hangs herself in the tomb and Haemon tries to kill his father first and then he kills himself with his sword...
As young dancers, they were best friends and fierce rivals. Deedee left the stage for marriage and motherhood, while Emma would become an international ballet icon. But when Deedee's teenage daughter is invited to join Emma's dance company and begins an affair with a young Russian star, the two women are forced to confront the choices they've made, the resentments they've hidden and the emotional truths they must face at the turning point.
At the dawn of history, the ancient Egyptians showed the world how to build the impossible... In an age before machines, when copper was the strongest metal yet discovered, great pharaohs like Khufu and Ramses II demonstrated how boundless ambition and vast quantities of human labour could transform rock and stone into some of the most incredible monuments ever created from carving out spectacular tombs in the Valley Of The Kings to the building of the iconic Great Pyramid. In this fascinating documentary special we uncover the secrets of Ancient Egypt Pharaoh, engineers and architects and bring to life great buildings and the ancient Egyptians saw them - towering over their great civilisation in the history of Africa, and perhaps the World....
The Philippines, 1898. Fifty Spanish soldiers arrive in the small village of Baler to rebuild an outpost. Although the war against the Filipinos and their American allies is almost lost, as is the Spanish Empire, the garrison will endure a cruel siege for eleven months. They will be the last to surrender.
Retired wealthy sea captain Jim McKay arrives in the Old West, where he becomes embroiled in a feud between his future father-in-law, Major Terrill, and the rough and lawless Hannasseys over a valuable patch of land.
A henpecked housewife ekes out a meager existence, surrounded by a host of colorful characters: her ungrateful husband, her delinquent sons, her headstrong mother-in-law, and her sex worker neighbor, among others.
A fading music hall comedian tries to help a despondent ballet dancer learn to walk and to again feel confident about life.
A wealthy and sheltered young woman elopes with a charming playboy and soon learns of his bad traits, including his extreme dishonesty and lust for money. Gradually, she begins to suspect that he intends to kill her to collect her life insurance.
On the night of 16 July 1942, ten year old Sarah and her parents are being arrested and transported to the Velodrome d'Hiver in Paris where thousands of other jews are being sent to get deported. Sarah however managed to lock her little brother in a closet just before the police entered their apartment. Sixty years later, Julia Jarmond, an American journalist in Paris, gets the assignment to write an article about this raid, a black page in the history of France. She starts digging archives and through Sarah's file discovers a well kept secret about her own in-laws.
The aftermath of a shocking explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power station made hundreds of people sacrifice their lives to clean up the site of the catastrophe and to successfully prevent an even bigger disaster that could have turned a large part of the European continent into an uninhabitable exclusion zone. This is their story.
When Gelsomina, a naïve young woman, is purchased from her impoverished mother by brutish circus strongman Zampanò to be his wife and partner, she loyally endures her husband's coldness and abuse as they travel the Italian countryside performing together. Soon Zampanò must deal with his jealousy and conflicted feelings about Gelsomina when she finds a kindred spirit in Il Matto, the carefree circus fool, and contemplates leaving Zampanò.
A gunfighting stranger comes to the small settlement of Lago. After gunning down three gunmen who tried to kill him, the townsfolk decide to hire the Stranger to hold off three outlaws who are on their way.
Scout Finch, 6, and her older brother Jem live in sleepy Maycomb, Alabama, spending much of their time with their friend Dill and spying on their reclusive and mysterious neighbor, Boo Radley. When Atticus, their widowed father and a respected lawyer, defends a black man named Tom Robinson against fabricated rape charges, the trial and tangent events expose the children to evils of racism and stereotyping.
New York Times reporter Sydney Schanberg is on assignment covering the Cambodian Civil War, with the help of local interpreter Dith Pran and American photojournalist Al Rockoff. When the U.S. Army pulls out amid escalating violence, Schanberg makes exit arrangements for Pran and his family. Pran, however, tells Schanberg he intends to stay in Cambodia to help cover the unfolding story — a decision he may regret as the Khmer Rouge rebels move in.
A touching story of an Italian book seller of Jewish ancestry who lives in his own little fairy tale. His creative and happy life would come to an abrupt halt when his entire family is deported to a concentration camp during World War II. While locked up he tries to convince his son that the whole thing is just a game.
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.
This expansive Greek drama follows a troupe of theater actors as they perform around their country during World War II. While the production that they put on is entitled "Golfo the Shepherdess," the thespians end up echoing scenes from classic Greek tales in their own lives, as Elektra plots revenge on her mother for the death of her father, and seeks help from her brother, Orestes, a young anti-fascist rebel.
A dramatic history of Pu Yi, the last of the Emperors of China, from his lofty birth and brief reign in the Forbidden City, the object of worship by half a billion people; through his abdication, his decline and dissolute lifestyle; his exploitation by the invading Japanese, and finally to his obscure existence as just another peasant worker in the People's Republic.
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 dramatization of raid to capture a suspected militant by the Israeli Defense Forces during the Second Intifada into the sprawling maze of the Balata Refugee Camp in Palestine.
In 1970s Iran, Marjane 'Marji' Satrapi watches events through her young eyes and her idealistic family of a long dream being fulfilled of the hated Shah's defeat in the Iranian Revolution of 1979. However as Marji grows up, she witnesses first hand how the new Iran, now ruled by Islamic fundamentalists, has become a repressive tyranny on its own.
The story of a father who has to smuggle granulated sugar home because of the embargo.
A short documentary about the life and death of the bullfighter Manuel Rodriguez Manolete. It recounts his career this celebrated Spanish bullfighter who was the inspiration for the ill-fated Montalvo in Pandora and The Flying Dutchman.
Yang Zirong disguises himself as a bandit to infiltrate and destroy a bandit group. He joins hands with a hostage, and together, they fight against the warlord, Hawk.
Thirteen-year-old Ramon is on the verge of many adolescent discoveries -- and the confusion that goes along with them. Shy and awkward, he's moved from town to town throughout his childhood and believes that life is about winning and losing. But he soon learns it's all about survival. Like Ramon, Spain is in transition (President Francisco Franco is about to die); it's a time of social upheaval marked by change, illusion and struggle.
A first feature based on sexual events. An actress undertakes her desire of directing her first movie, without a budget or any production company funding her project. She gathers a group of professional actors and actresses, and proposes a project based on a very particular experience: stepping on their fears through a metaphorical 'leap of faith'. As the project advances, individual conflicts will arise affecting the shoot, making the movie crew wonder whether or not they should go on. Will they take the leap of faith with all its consequences?
All her life, Englishwoman Gladys Aylward knew that China was the place where she belonged. Not qualified to be sent there as a missionary, Gladys works as a domestic to earn the money to send herself to a poor, remote village. There she eventually lives a full and happy life: running the inn, acting as "foot inspector", advising the local Mandarin, and even winning the heart of mixed race Captain Lin Nan. But Gladys discovers her real destiny when the country is invaded by Japan and the Chinese children need her to save their lives. Based on a true story.
Shanghai, China, 1930. When young Shuisheng arrives from the countryside, his uncle Liushu puts him at the service of Bijou, the mistress of Laoda, supreme boss of the Tang Triad, constantly threatened by his enemies, both those he knows and those lurking in the shadows.
Recluse Smith is drawn into a revolutionary struggle between guerrillas and right-wingers in New Zealand. Implicated in a murder and framed as a revolutionary conspirator, Smith tries to maintain an attitude of non-violence while caught between warring factions.
Best friends Galleria, Chanel, Dorinda, and Aqua, A.K.A. the girl band "The Cheetahs," get the opportunity of a lifetime when they strut their way to Barcelona, Spain, to perform in an international music festival. Along the way, the "amigas Cheetahs" learn that, although their paths are not the same, they are lucky to have one another for the journey.
Toby, a cynical film director finds himself trapped in the outrageous delusions of an old Spanish shoe-maker who believes himself to be Don Quixote. In the course of their comic and increasingly surreal adventures, Toby is forced to confront the tragic repercussions of a film he made in his idealistic youth.