Five shorts spanning a century on lives impacted by the Panama Canal. Men, women and children who are influenced by the existence of the "Canal", the event that changed the history of not only a country but the world.
Social & External
The people behind it
Lakisha May
Clarice Thompson (segment "1913") / Clarice Jones (segment "2013")
Andre Morris
Phillip (segment "1913")
Charlie Goldstein
Jake Wright (segment "1950") (as Carlos Eduardo Goldstein Alemán)
Kathleen Wise
Patsy Wright (segment "1950")
Hannah Schöbitz
Lucy (segment "1964")
Luis Manuel Barrios
Silverio (segment "1977")
José Angel Murillo
Leonidas (segment "1977")
Meredith Carley
Aunt Perla (segment "2013")
Henry Twohy
Jeremiah (segment "1913")
Earl Patrick Watson
Pastor Thompson (segment "1913")
After three years at boarding school, Hanna is returning home to her little village to help her father's butcher’s shop during her break. Soon she learns that she is not welcome in the village. Everyone remembers the horrific news story about her mother’s death which was followed by the discovery of three dead men in the marsh. Superstition rules the village and everyone believes her mother was a witch that lured the men into the marsh directly to their death. While struggling to make friends, she meets extroverted city girl Eva. Thinking she has finally found a friend, Hanna’s confidence, and with that her "power", starts to grow, while scary accidents begin to happen around her.
Amanda and Jake are in love and want to start a new life in Los Angeles. Will they make the right decisions? The first 24 hours of their new life take them all around the city, bringing them more surprises and frustrations than expected.
After returning from college, a girl's controlling mother triggers her relapse into eating disorders and substance abuse in an effort to regain her autonomy.
Suppose lost and found objects could talk... But they can! At least four of them... : -A statuette of Osiris remembers how two ex-lovers, a model and a good for nothing who claimed to be an Egyptologist, met again one Christmas Eve. -A violin has things to say about Raoul, a humble policeman who lost Solange, a widowed grocer he loved, to a god-dam seducing busker also named Raoul. -A scarf was witness to an eerie romance between a young madman and girl he had saved from suicide. -A funeral wreath lets us know how it caused a young woman to believe her lover dead. After having told their respective story, the objects return to their customary stillness.
May 1945. On the outskirts of Prague, ordinary people meet Soviet soldiers-liberators with tears of joy in their eyes. In the early days of the lull, someone sadly recalls a pre-war life; someone unexpectedly meets his love; someone is returning from enemy dungeons looking hopefully into the future; and someone, having moved from a tank into a Czech tram, warmly recalls his craft as a car driver... These days, all those who survived the Great War fire swear an oath to keep peace on Earth forever, honoring the memory of those who gave their lives for simple human happiness.
Anita and Fred have been a couple for 50 years, and happily married for nearly as long. They have two grown children, and their grandchildren are finishing school. Both can look back at a fulfilling past, but their lives are still rich and vibrant. The fact that Fred is terribly ill has been hidden from the family. For the first time in all these years, Fred takes some liberties, which his wife interprets as an affront. Never before has she felt so abandoned. Although she starts to question her relationship, a love like theirs cannot end so easily. Indeed it should never end.
Marzieh is a young female actress living in Tehran. The authorities ban her theatre work and, like all young people in Iran, she is forced to lead a secret life in order to express herself artistically. At an underground rave, she meets Iranian born Saman, now an Australian citizen, who offers her a way out of her country and the possibility of living without fear.
In the post-apocalypse world, a boy and a robot walk toward the unknown, bound by the search for a missing father and the belief that light still exists among the ruins.
After living 45 years in Germany, the Turkish Hüseyin Yilmaz, seventy, announces to his family that he has bought a house in Turkey and they should return to make the necessary reforms. The idea is unwelcome and causes very heated discussions. In addition, Canan, a granddaughter of Hüseyin, announces she is pregnant and the father is her English boyfriend, and no one knew anything.
An old, broken morin khurr (horse head fiddle) compels renowned Mongolian singer Urna Chahar Tugchi to take a road journey to Ulan Bator and the steppes of Mongolia.
A mysterious comedy set during New Year Eve.
A man and his son move from the Pacific coast of Colombia to Cali, but have a difficult time adapting to the city. When his son is killed, the father must go through the hard process of grief while trying to find roots in a place that does not belong to him.
Happily Ever After is a trilogy. Each is a love story with a touch of magic, comedy and whimsy. Tying all the segments together is a seemingly fake fortune teller, who uses a science sphere she got at a novelty store as a crystal ball!
A young woman is forced by her abusive father to marry an older man even though she is in love with a kindly young doctor.
Summer vacation. Mika is overjoyed to see Windstorm again. But then she discovers strange wounds on the belly of Windstorm, for which no one has an explanation. Yet this is Kaltenbach verge of bankruptcy! With a heavy heart Mika decides to participate in a variety tournament in which beckons a high prize money. But during training affects Windstorm distracted, often he runs away easily. Mika pursued the black stallion until deep into the forest and is quite surprised: From the thicket a seemingly magical gray mare appears and the two horses dance around lovingly. Suddenly, a strange boy named Milan appears, who says the mare had escaped him. He claimed that he could Help Mika to win the tournament. But is there still time to save Kaltenbach?
A young woman must confront her physical and emotional boundaries as she enters the world of professional domination and submission.
The Moorish general Othello is manipulated into thinking that his new wife Desdemona has been carrying on an affair with his lieutenant Michael Cassio when in reality it is all part of the scheme of a bitter ensign named Iago.
This snackbar, owned by Ali, in a suburb of Rotterdam is a refuge for the local Moroccan youth. They are wild, violent and criminal. To them Ali is like an old, trustworthy Turkish uncle, understanding, funny but also strict. But what if Ali, with his addiction to gambling jeopardizes their habitat?
Kate loves working at the small café she runs with her friend Polly. Her big dream is to open her own literary café. But out of love for her husband, she puts that dream on hold.
In a remote South American colony in the late 18th century, officer Zama of the Spanish crown waits in vain for a transfer to a more prestigious location. He suffers small humiliations and petty politicking as he increasingly succumbs to lust and paranoia.
María Margarita is the youngest of four siblings in a family living in a mining town in the Atacama Desert (Chile). The most special time of the week for this family is Sunday, when they all go to the movies to enjoy stories that let them escape their everyday lives by transporting them to other worlds. The girl’s parents soon realise that the little girl has a very special gift: an almost uncanny ability to recount movies. The girl’s extraordinary talent will spread throughout the village, changing the fortunes of her family as the country is transformed forever.
A psychotherapist helps a law student cope with schizophrenia in one of five interconnected tales dealing with mental illness.
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.
Based on true events about the foot soldiers of the early feminist movement, women who were forced underground to pursue a dangerous game of cat and mouse with an increasingly brutal State.
Young women toiling in a factory are exposed to hazardous material which takes a disastrous toll on their health.
At the tense 1938 Munich Conference, former friends who now work for opposing governments become reluctant spies racing to expose a Nazi secret.
Tells the parallel stories of nine-year-old Carlitos and his mother, Rosario. In the hopes of providing a better life for her son, Rosario works illegally in the U.S. while her mother cares for Carlitos back in Mexico.
In the polarized and violent Medellín (Colombia's 'City of Eternal Spring') of the 1970s, doctor Héctor Abad Gómez is concerned about both his children and children from less favored classes. After a devastating loss in the family, Héctor gives himself to the greater cause of public health programs for the poor in Medellín to the consternation of the city's authorities.
Feeling awkward and isolated, an imaginative and strong-willed teenage girl runs away from home with an older punk rock drifter.
In 1575, the young soldier Miguel de Cervantes is captured on the high seas by Barbary pirates and taken to Algiers as a hostage. Aware that a cruel death awaits him if his family does not pay his ransom soon, he finds refuge in his passion for storytelling.
Patagonia, 1960. A German doctor meets an Argentinean family and follows them to a town where the family will be starting a new life. The family welcomes the doctor into their home and entrust their young daughter to his care, not knowing that he is one of the most dangerous criminals in the world.
At the behest of an old and dear friend, playwright Lillian Hellman undertakes a dangerous mission to smuggle funds into Nazi Germany.
A drama set in the American South, where a precocious, troubled girl finds a safe haven in the music and movement of Elvis Presley.
The inspiring true story of Richard Montañez, the Frito Lay janitor who channeled his Mexican American heritage and upbringing to turn the iconic Flamin' Hot Cheetos into a snack that disrupted the food industry and became a global pop culture phenomenon.
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.
The warmhearted story of Polish immigrant and mathematician Stan Ulam, who moved to the U.S. in the 1930s. Stan deals with the difficult losses of family and friends all while helping to create the hydrogen bomb and the first computer.
In New York City, the lives of a lawyer, an actuary, a house-cleaner, a professor, and the people around them intersect as they ponder order and happiness in the face of life's cold unpredictability.
A troubled young woman becomes obsessed with her mysterious new neighbor, who bears a striking resemblance to the girl's dead mother.
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.