Christmas As Usual
To celebrate their engagement, Thea takes Jashan home — but his Indian roots and her family's Norwegian traditions clash in a chaotic Christmas.
There is no truth. There is only perception – Gustave Flaubert
Three stories are intertwined in a land, Friuli, in the North-East of Italy, which extends along a triple border. The stories of Irene, a Carnian, Christian girl; Pavel, Ukrainian and Jewish; Mehdi, Iranian and Muslim. Udine. A beautiful city, but one that is perceived as cold and inhospitable by emigrants. Pavel and Mehdi are illegal immigrants, who share an apartment - and concerns about social matters - in the “ghetto” of Via Roma. In love with Pavel, Irene tries to help them, but her surge of solidarity goes perhaps too far, and she regrets it. Mehdi lives obsessed with an ancient guilt: his fragile soul is attracted to Evil. Predestination and moral choice. Two alternatives? Subjection to freedom of Good or Evil. What will the protagonists choose?
To celebrate their engagement, Thea takes Jashan home — but his Indian roots and her family's Norwegian traditions clash in a chaotic Christmas.
Walt is a lonely convenience store clerk who has fallen in love with a Mexican migrant worker named Johnny. Though Walt has little in common with the object of his affections — including a shared language — his desire to possess Johnny prompts a sexual awakening that results in taboo trysts and a tangled love triangle.
Caye is a young prostitute whose family is unaware of her profession. She meets her striking Dominican neighbour Zulema, an illegal immigrant, after she finds her in the bathroom, badly beaten up. They strike up a close friendship unbeknownst to Caye's xenophobic co-workers.
In a post-apocalyptic future, the planet is devoured by disease. In order to survive, two brothers can only count on each other. They work as a team until one of them, K, gets seriously injured. R, the youngest, has to make significant decision for both of them.
A young man upsets his Punjabi family when he falls in love with an Irish schoolteacher.
In 1980 the black Falashas in Ethiopia are recognised as genuine Jews and are secretly carried to Israel. The day before the transport the son of a Jewish mother dies. In his place and with his name (Schlomo) she takes a Christian 9-year-old boy.
In an Italian province of Calabria. Here we meet Marcello, his brother Paolo and their father, who have lost everything except hope of a better life on the other side of the Atlantic in America, where their uncle had emigrated to the year before last. Leaving their homeland and memories behind, Paolo and Giancarlo set sail for the New World. During their voyage, Marcello meets a daring orphan from Naples by the name of Antonia who will constantly lend him courage through thick and thin.
While working in Europe, Avram comes to realize that Italians are paying good money for trained dogs that can protect them from the waves of immigrants. That's Avram's big-time idea: he returns to Romania to start breeding watch dogs which he can later export to Italy. As it happens, he settles next to a camp of immigrants recently sent back from Rome. Thus, the Italian tension is willy-nilly reenacted on the banks of the Danube. Avram's life gets complicated. He starts having an affair with his own daughter in law, lands in conflict with his ex-immigrant neighbors and his life is literally under threat. The film ends with an unpredictable situation.
Carme, a gynecologist from Barcelona who has just separated from her colleague, gets involved in the problem of Shahida, one of her patients, whose husband refuses to recognize their newborn daughter.
Two young artists leave the capital to see an old ritual that depicts the runaway slaves, in the interior of Brazil. There, they are involved with the celebration in an unexpected way.
Olivier Assayas, Gus Van Sant, Wes Craven and Alfonso Cuaron are among the 20 distinguished directors who contribute to this collection of 18 stories, each exploring a different aspect of Parisian life. The colourful characters in this drama include a pair of mimes, a husband trying to chose between his wife and his lover, and a married man who turns to a prostitute for advice.
In 1949, composer Roman Strauss is executed for the murder of his wife. In 1990s Los Angeles, a detective comes across a mute amnesiac woman who is somehow linked to the Strauss murder.
In 1971 Salford fish-and-chip shop owner George Khan expects his family to follow his strict Pakistani Muslim ways. But his children, with an English mother and having been born and brought up in Britain, increasingly see themselves as British and start to reject their father's rules on dress, food, religion, and living in general.
In Munich, the Armenian Areg dreams of studying cinema with his German girlfriend Lilly. Until her widowed mother fell seriously ill with diabetes. Areg and her little brother Garnik have to take care of her.
After failing to commit his first murder, an aspiring serial killer decides that the most rational way to get started is to kill a friend who totally trusts you. This is how a lonely mentally unstable guy meets a naive next-door boy.
Region of Castilla La Vieja, Spain, early 20th century. In Luján, a village ravaged by drought, Juan, a humble farmer who survives with his wife and son, confronts a local loan shark and is imprisoned as a result.
A Pakistani Briton renovates a rundown laundrette with his male lover while dealing with drama within his family, the local Pakistani community, and a persistent mob of skinheads.
Two young Nicaraguan children, Saslaya and her mute brother Dario, must travel to Costa Rica to find their long-lost mother.
When a mysterious fog surrounds the boundaries of California, there is a communication breakdown and all the Mexicans disappear, affecting the economy and the state stops working missing the Mexican workers and dwellers.
Romanian-born Radu Patru is a trainee at a prestigious French news network. Serving as a translator and general problem solver, or "fixer," for the headlining journalists during his trial period, he's looking to make his big break. He sees his opportunity when two underage Romanian prostitutes are repatriated from France, creating an international scandal. Taking advantage of his language skills and local connections, Radu is prepared to do whatever it takes to interview one of the young girls. But as he ventures into tricky moral ground, he must stop to ask himself if, as an aspiring journalist, he can live with the consequences of his actions, and if, as a father, he's setting a good example for his son.