In the Swedish city of Lethe, people from different walks of life take part in a series of short, deadpan vignettes that rush past. Some are just seconds long, none longer than a couple of minutes. A young woman remembers a fantasy honeymoon with a rock guitarist. A man awakes from a dream about bomber planes. A businessman boasts about success while being robbed by a pickpocket, and so on. The absurdist collection is accompanied by Dixieland jazz and similar music.
The Psychiatrist
Micke Larsson
The Professor
The Tuba Player
The Man on the Balcony
The Carpet Dealer
Mia
The Businessman
The Carpenter
Anna
A group of scientists is sent to the planet Arkanar to help the local civilization, which is in the Medieval phase of its own history, to find the right path to progress. Their task is a difficult one: they cannot interfere violently and in no case can they kill. The scientist Rumata tries to save the local intellectuals from their punishment and cannot avoid taking a position.
The puppy love of two teenagers is set against a backdrop of adults struggling with their own lives. As a couple in love, they don't care about anything but themselves and seem totally unaware about everything that surrounds them.
Author Rudyard Kipling and his wife search for their 17-year-old son after he goes missing during WWI.
Meiko Inoue is a recent college grad working as an office lady in a job she hates. Her boyfriend Taneda is permanently crashing at her apartment because his job as a freelance illustrator doesn't pay enough for rent. And her parents in the country keep sending her boxes of veggies that just rot in her fridge. Straddling the line between her years as a student and the rest of her life, Meiko struggles with the feeling that she's just not cut out to be a part of the real world.
Iben Holt, a rich bohemian, lives in an occupied country. On his way home from a party he hears an explosion and sees flames rising from a factory. At home awaits another surprise.
Space, forms, colours and sounds symbolise a recognisable world. New beginnings put an end to familiar patterns. Do we shape as much as we are shaped?
Company commander Claus Michael Pedersen and his men are stationed in Helmand, Afghanistan. Meanwhile back in Denmark, with a husband at war and three children missing their father, everyday life is a struggle for Claus' wife Maria. During a routine mission, the soldiers are caught in heavy Taliban crossfire. In order to save his men, Claus makes a decision that ultimately sees him return to Denmark accused of a war crime.
A monumental traffic jam serves as the backdrop for the lives of the inhabitants of a Swedish city.
An unhappy middle-aged banker agrees to a procedure that will fake his death and give him a completely new look and identity; one that comes with its own price.
Anthropology student Daria, who's helping a property developer build a village in the Los Angeles desert, and dropout Mark, who's wanted by the authorities for allegedly killing a policeman during a student riot, accidentally encounter each other in Death Valley and soon begin an unrestrained romance.
One day in the life of Anders, a young recovering drug addict, who takes a brief leave from his treatment center to interview for a job and catch up with old friends in Oslo.
A French illusionist travels to Scotland to work. He meets a young woman in a small village. Their ensuing adventure in Edinburgh changes both their lives forever.
Véronique is a beautiful young French woman who aspires to be a renowned singer; Weronika lives in Poland, has a similar career goal and looks identical to Véronique, though the two are not related. The film follows both women as they contend with the ups and downs of their individual lives, with Véronique embarking on an unusual romance with Alexandre Fabbri, a puppeteer who may be able to help her with her existential issues.
London, 1953. Mr. Williams, a veteran civil servant, is an important cog within the city's bureaucracy as it struggles to rebuild in the aftermath of World War II. Buried under paperwork at the office and lonely at home, his life has long felt empty and meaningless. Then a devastating medical diagnosis forces him to take stock, and to try and grasp some fulfilment before it passes permanently beyond reach.
Delos is a futuristic amusement park that features themed worlds—ancient Rome, Medieval times and the Old West—populated by human-like androids. After two patrons have a run-in with a menacing gunslinger in West World, the androids at Delos all begin to malfunction, causing havoc throughout the park.
In a hospital on the outskirts of 1920s Los Angeles, an injured stuntman begins to tell a fellow patient, a little girl with a broken arm, a fantastic story about 5 mythical heroes. Thanks to his fractured state of mind and her vivid imagination, the line between fiction and reality starts to blur as the tale advances.
Sentenced to six years in prison, Malik El Djebena is alone in the world and can neither read nor write. On his arrival at the prison, he seems younger and more brittle than the others detained there. At once he falls under the sway of a group of Corsicans who enforce their rule in the prison. As the 'missions' go by, he toughens himself and wins the confidence of the Corsican group.
A prestigious Stockholm museum's chief art curator finds himself in times of both professional and personal crisis as he attempts to set up a controversial new exhibit.
A stranger arrives in a little village and soon after a mysterious sickness starts spreading. A policeman is drawn into the incident and is forced to solve the mystery in order to save his daughter.
Matt, a young glaciologist, soars across the vast, silent, icebound immensities of the South Pole as he recalls his love affair with Lisa. They meet at a mobbed rock concert in a vast music hall - London's Brixton Academy. They are in bed at night's end. Together, over a period of several months, they pursue a mutual sexual passion whose inevitable stages unfold in counterpoint to nine live-concert songs.
Semi-retired Michigan lawyer Paul Biegler takes the case of Army Lt. Manion, who murdered a local innkeeper after his wife claimed that he raped her. Over the course of an extensive trial, Biegler parries with District Attorney Lodwick and out-of-town prosecutor Claude Dancer to set his client free, but his case rests on the victim's mysterious business partner, who's hiding a dark secret.
A mentally unstable Vietnam War veteran works as a night-time taxi driver in New York City where the perceived decadence and sleaze feed his urge for violent action.
Polish immigrant Karol Karol finds himself out of a marriage, a job and a country when his French wife, Dominique, divorces him after six months due to his impotence. Forced to leave France after losing the business they jointly owned, Karol enlists fellow Polish expatriate Mikołaj to smuggle him back to their homeland.
Several lonely hearts in a semi-provincial suburb of a town in Denmark use a beginner's course in Italian as the platform to meet the romance of their lives. The film, which unspools the connections and family drama shared between the students, complies with several aesthetic principles of Dogme 95 movement.
1982, Poland. A translator loses her husband and becomes a victim of her own sorrow. She looks to sex, to her son, to law, and to hypnotism when she has nothing else in this time of martial law when Solidarity was banned.
Witek runs after a train. Three variations follow on how such a seemingly banal incident could influence the rest of Witek's life.
A detailed chronicle of the famous 1969 tour of the United States by the British rock band The Rolling Stones, which culminated with the disastrous and tragic concert held on December 6 at the Altamont Speedway Free Festival, an event of historical significance, as it marked the end of an era: the generation of peace and love suddenly became the generation of disillusionment.
The life story of traditional Irish folk singer Joe Heaney, who is estimated to have recorded in excess of 500 traditional Irish sean nós ('old style') songs. Heaney moved from Ireland to the UK, and then on to New York City, where he settled shortly after performing at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965.
When illegal card dealer and recovering heroin addict Frankie Machine gets out of prison, he decides to straighten up. Armed with nothing but an old drum set, Frankie tries to get honest work as a drummer. But when his former employer and his old drug dealer re-enter his life, Frankie finds it hard to stay clean and eventually finds himself succumbing to his old habits.
The brief life of Jean Michel Basquiat, a world renowned New York street artist struggling with fame, drugs and his identity.
An endearing light comedy about a woman who spontaneously becomes a resident of Venice after her family left her behind. While enjoying the wonderful people she meets she achieves a new life and the first time independent of her family.
Brian Cohen is an average young Jewish man, but through a series of ridiculous events, he gains a reputation as the Messiah. When he's not dodging his followers or being scolded by his shrill mother, the hapless Brian has to contend with the pompous Pontius Pilate and acronym-obsessed members of a separatist movement. Rife with Monty Python's signature absurdity, the tale finds Brian's life paralleling Biblical lore, albeit with many more laughs.
Australian good girl Sandy and greaser Danny fell in love over the summer. But when they unexpectedly discover they're now in the same high school, will they be able to rekindle their romance despite their eccentric friends?
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.
A married farmer falls under the spell of a slatternly woman from the city, who tries to convince him to drown his wife.
The drug-induced utopias of four Coney Island residents are shattered when their addictions run deep.
Three merchant seamen fleeing the Japanese take refuge on a Pacific island, where they come across a doctor and his daughter who take care of the natives, a hostile tribe that wants to kill the sailors for trespassing on their sacred ground.
How do you ask a wild, impetuous hairdresser on a date if you're a pathologically timid philosophy student with no social skills?