Blonde Betty Elms has only just arrived in Hollywood to become a movie star when she meets an enigmatic brunette with amnesia. Meanwhile, as the two set off to solve the second woman's identity, filmmaker Adam Kesher runs into ominous trouble while casting his latest project.
A retired farmer and widower in his 70s, Alvin Straight learns one day that his distant brother Lyle has suffered a stroke and may not recover. Alvin is determined to make things right with Lyle while he still can, but his brother lives in Wisconsin, while Alvin is stuck in Iowa with no car and no driver's license. Then he hits on the idea of making the trip on his old lawnmower, thus beginning a picturesque and at times deeply spiritual odyssey.
After losing her mother in a car accident that leaves her with a broken arm, 4-year-old Ponette struggles with anguish and fear. Left by her father with a caring aunt and her children, Ponette grieves, secretly hoping her mother will somehow come back. Confused by the religious explanations provided by adults, and challenged by the cruel taunts of a few children at school, little Ponette must make her way through her emotional turmoil.
A very handsome man finds the love of his life, but he suffers an accident and needs to have his face rebuilt by surgery after it is severely disfigured.
Set during the Bosnian war in the early 1990s, Luka is a mild-mannered railway clerk whose life is turned upside down, not just by the outbreak of the war, but when his wife runs off with a local musician. Then Luka's son is conscripted and eventually captured in the fighting. To recover his son, Luka is commanded to guard a pretty young Muslim nurse who will be used in a hostage swapping operation.
An enigmatic actress may have a hidden agenda when she auditions for a part in a misogynistic writer's play.
Erika Kohut, a sexually repressed piano teacher living with her domineering mother, meets a young man who starts romantically pursuing her.
As part of an intergalactic coalition, a well-meaning space alien volunteers to bring a message of self-actualization and harmony with nature to the one planet rejected by all her peers as incorrigible: Earth.
Abortionist Vera Drake finds her beliefs and practices clash with the mores of 1950s Britain – a conflict that leads to tragedy for her family.
In Paris, Lulu, a passionate policeman, works with the faith of a rookie, despite the sclerotic bureaucracy and the incompetence or negligence of some of his colleagues. In his new position as a narcotics inspector, he tries to keep his sanity as he witnesses the worst of the human condition.
An elderly couple and a younger man and woman follow up failed seduction attempts with conversation about love and the meaning of life.
As the Algerian War draws to a close, a teenager with a girlfriend starts feeling homosexual urges for two of his classmates: a country boy, and a French-Algerian intellectual.
A passenger on a cruise ship develops an irresistible infatuation with an eccentric paraplegic's wife.
In 1894, French Captain Alfred Dreyfus is wrongfully convicted of treason and sentenced to life imprisonment at the Devil’s Island penal colony.
Penny works at a supermarket and Phil is a gentle taxi-driver. Penny’s love for Phil has run dry and they lead joyless lives with their two children, Rachel, a cleaner, and Rory, who is unemployed and aggressive.
Two housewives discuss philosophical themes (actually an updated dialogue between Plato and Socrates) while doing the house work. The husband of one of them rehearses his part in a theatrical play, reading a 20th century philosophical text about totalitarianism.
In a mining town which has been blighted by economic downturns, an elementary school headmaster struggles to obtain social services on behalf of his students.
Victor is a legal advisor who finds himself abandoned by his wife and fired the same day. He tries to seek comfort from different friends and family members, but everyone he meets is concerned with their own problems. His morale begins to falter when he realizes that no one cares about him.
Nelly leaves her lazy, unemployed husband to work for retired judge Mr Arnaud, forty years her senior, after he offers to clear her bills for her. While she types his memoirs the two develop a close friendship, but Arnaud becomes jealous when Nelly begins dating his good-looking young publisher.
"Fanny" is the second part of the "Marseille trilogy", made by Marcel Pagnol with the generic name of "Marius, Fanny and César". Fanny falls in love and is abandoned by Marius. Now she discovers she is pregnant. Her mother and Marius's father, César, persuade her to accept the romantic advances of a much older man. To save face, Fanny accepts to marry Honoré Panisse, a rich merchant of the Vieux Port, 30 years her senior who will recognize her son.