The film tells different stories in a kind of parallel Germany about love, affection and hatred.
Social & External
The people behind it
Christoph Bach
Lehrer Nickel
Margit Carstensen
Frau Sandberg
Jakub Gierszał
Maximilian Sandberg
Corinna Harfouch
Inga Sandberg
Sandra Hüller
Franziska Feldenhoven
Carla Juri
Natalie
Johannes Krisch
Einsiedler
Michael Maertens
Claude Petersdorf
Dieter Meier
Furrier
Max Pellny
Jonas
Devoted teacher Anne Sullivan leads deaf, blind and mute Helen Keller out of solitude and helps integrate her into the world.
One winter night, Pilar runs away from home. With her, she takes only a few belongings and her son, Juan. Antonio soon sets out to look for her. He says Pilar is his sunshine, and what's more, "She gave him her eyes"...
Isa, 25, is an influencer:1,5 million followers on Instagram. Too bad that she gets busted with illegal substances for athletes, robbing her of authenticity - a dramatic decline in her career.
After a disfiguring leg injury, a young woman develops an unsettling secret relationship with her own body in which pain is pleasure, mutilation is love and hungers of the flesh have a mind of their own.
Marie, who works as a successful door-to-door encyclopedia salesperson, has been married to her husband Francois for 12 years and has a two-year-old son. Though she is relatively content with her life, she feels something is wanting. Enter 50-year old African-American Bill. Initially she is annoyed by his insouciance, but she finds that she is irresistibly attracted to him. Soon the two are in the midst of sordid illicit affair. She knows little about her new lover, and he seems uninterested in learning about her, but the long sessions of lovemaking are something else entirely. Feeling out of control, Marie is increasingly repelled by her own actions. Psychologically, she struggles to reconcile her torrid encounters with Bill and mundane domestic chores such as bathing her son. Moreover, she finds herself incapable of hiding her adulterous behavior, rather she comes home with scratches and hickeys all over her body, to the devastation Francois.
On her birthday, Juliette is too upset to worry about the strange cleaner who imitates her every move and lusts after her clothing.
Or shoulders a lot: she's 17 or 18, a student, works evenings at a restaurant, recycles cans and bottles for cash, and tries to keep her mother Ruthie from returning to streetwalking in Tel Aviv. Ruthie calls Or "my treasure," but Ruthie is a burden. She's just out of hospital, weak, and Or has found her a job as a house cleaner. The call of the quick money on the street is tough for Ruthie to ignore. Or's emotions roil further when the mother of the youth she's in love with comes to the flat to warn her off. With love fading and Ruthie perhaps beyond help, Or's choices narrow.
Fiona and Grant have been married for nearly 50 years. They have to face the fact that Fiona’s absent-mindedness is a symptom of Alzheimer’s disease. She must go to a specialized nursing home, where she slowly forgets Grant and turns her affection to Aubrey, another patient in the home.
Eleven directors from eleven countries each contribute an eleven-minute short reflecting on the events of 11 September 2001: A village teacher in Iran tries to explain to her young students what's happened; city kids in Burkina Faso think they've spotted Osama bin Laden; a deaf Frenchwoman in Manhattan writes a Dear John letter to a man who left that morning for work at the World Trade Center; a Chilean remembers Allende; events recall other deaths; a mother endures more than her son's death. Tones vary, as do the locales. Most concern coming to terms with the events of the day, but at least one confronts the viewer with tragedy and death.
Louise, who has just written a novel, comes to Paris to meet with a potential publisher. While in the city, she stays with her older sister, Martine, who in many ways is the exact opposite of Louise: she lives in a fashionable neighborhood, is cold to others, and has snobby friends, while Louise lives in a small town and is thoroughly unpretentious. Louise's apparent happiness -- and similarities to their mother -- gradually gets on Martine's nerves.
The little nomad girl, Nansal, finds a baby dog in the Mongolian veld, who becomes her best friend - against all rejections of her parents. A story about a Mongolian family of nomads - their traditional way of life and the rising call of the City.
A group of male friends become obsessed with five mysterious sisters who are sheltered by their strict, religious parents.
A father and daughter live a perfect but mysterious existence in Forest Park, a beautiful nature reserve near Portland, Oregon, rarely making contact with the world. But when a small mistake tips them off to authorities, they are sent on an increasingly erratic journey in search of a place to call their own.
A radio compere is forced to take the late shift and finds her night going places she couldn't have imagined.
Four years after a military coup overthrew the Brazilian government in 1964, all civil rights were suspended and torture became a systematic practice. Using a mix of fiction and documentary this extraordinary film is a searing record of personal memory, political repression and the will to survive. Interviews with eight women who were political prisoners during the military dictatorship are framed by the fantasies and imaginings of an anonymous character, portrayed by actress Irene Ravache.
Reluctantly, a sulky adolescent returns to her parents' house for yet another boring summer vacation, dabbling in desire and the art of desirability, eventually mixing reality with vision, caged fantasies with the fierce female sexuality.
When a Mongolian nomadic family's newest camel colt is rejected by its mother, a musician is needed for a ritual to change her mind.
Single dad Richard meets Christine, a starving artist who moonlights as a cabbie. They awkwardly attempt to start a romance, but Richard’s divorce has left him emotionally damaged. Meanwhile, Richard’s sons—one a teenager, the other 6-years-old—take part in clumsy experiments with the opposite sex.
A contemporary story of love, rejection, and triumph as a young Māori girl fights to fulfill a destiny her grandfather refuses to recognize.
In a suburban landscape, the lives of several families interlace with loss, despair and personal crisis. Esther Gold has lost focus on all but caring for her comatose son, Paul, and neglects her daughter and husband. Lawyer Jim Train is devoted to his career, not his family. Helen Christianson wants to find a new spark in life, while Annette Jennings tries to rebuild hers.
A psychotherapist helps a law student cope with schizophrenia in one of five interconnected tales dealing with mental illness.
A poor, struggling South Carolinian mother and daughter face painful choices with their resolve and pride. Bone, the eldest daughter, and Anney her tired mother, grow both closer and farther apart: Anney sees Glen as her last chance.
More interested in partying and flirting with young musicians than work, veteran rock journalist Ellie Klug has one last chance to prove her value to her magazine’s editor: a no-stone-unturned search to discover what really happened to long lost rock god, Matt Smith, who also happens to be her ex-boyfriend. Teaming up with an eccentric amateur documentary filmmaker, Ellie hits the road in search of answers.
Defiant young activists take the women's suffrage movement by storm, putting their lives at risk to help American women win the right to vote.
Set in a warm summer in 1990 in former East Germany, it follows a young woman who begins a relationship with a charismatic farmer who is twice her age.
In order to be reinstated to the bar and recover custody of her daughter, a hotshot lawyer, now in recovery and on probation, must take on the appeal of a woman wrongfully convicted of murder.
When lapsed Jew and former cardiologist Harry suddenly decides to spend his retirement as a pig farmer in Nazareth, Israel, the move deeply shocks his family and his new neighbours. Back in New York, Harry’s ex-wife Monica is trying to manage the lives of their adult children, Annabelle and David, as well as her own.
The story of a young writer's transformation when her past invades her present.
A troubled young woman becomes obsessed with her mysterious new neighbor, who bears a striking resemblance to the girl's dead mother.
During the 1976 Soweto uprising, a white school teacher's life and values are threatened when he asks questions about the death of a young black boy who died in police custody.
Thomas Montgomery, a married father of two young daughters, gets seduced by the world of online gambling and chat rooms where a virtual romance and sexual obsession ultimately leads to the murder of an innocent man.
Feeling awkward and isolated, an imaginative and strong-willed teenage girl runs away from home with an older punk rock drifter.
When seventeen-year-old Hannah stumbles upon a website about Thinspiration--an online community devoted to anorexia as a life choice--she becomes an obsessive follower of the site founder, ButterflyAna. By the time Hannah's family realizes what is happening and get Hannah the help she needs, the disease has fully taken hold and Hannah is refusing to eat. Will this family be able to exorcise the demon of anorexia from their lives?
1981, Quiberon, a small village on the coast of Brittany, France. Hilde Fritsch arrives to visit her old friend who has retreated to a spa hotel to escape the daily pressures of her life. Her friend is world-famous star Romy Schneider, but together, they appear like two regular women who are just happy to be reunited. Yet it quickly becomes apparent that Hilde is supposed to offer the support the sensitive actress needs to be able to truly face her own demons.
In a small North German village a drama played out during and shortly after the Second World War about duty versus individual conscience and morality.
A drama set in the American South, where a precocious, troubled girl finds a safe haven in the music and movement of Elvis Presley.
Years after her son's suicide, a woman longs to confront both the past and a friend of his who took his business idea.
A pair of twin brothers from East L.A. choose to live their lives differently and end up on opposite sides of the law.
Young teen girl Xiu Xiu is sent away to a remote corner of the Sichuan steppes for manual labor in 1975 (sending young people to there was a part of Cultural Revolution in China). A year later, she agrees to go to even more remote spot with a Tibetan saddle tramp Lao Jin to learn horse herding.
