Fiore, an Italian conman, arrives in post Communist Albania with Gino, his young apprentice, to set up a shoe factory that will never open. The con requires a native Albanian, so they designate Spiro, an impoverished and confused former political prisoner as chairman of the board. When Fiore returns to Italy to get government funds for the project, Spiro unexpectedly disappears and Gino sets out on a journey to find him. The search leads him to discover Spiro's tragic personal history and witness Albanian poverty firsthand.

In the aftermath of a car crash, a man discovers his dreams are tied to a stranger's sleepwalking.

Writer Sílvio Proença needs to travel to São Paulo in order to promote his new book. At the airport, he meets a group of old mates. With the boarding canceled due to a strong storm, the group goes to the apartment of Marialva, daughter of one of Proença's friends. Seduced by Marialva's music and charms, Proença spends the night there, where he wakes up the next day, completely naked. Still groggy from his hangover, he goes to pick up the bread left outside the apartment; that's when the wind closes the door and leaves him naked outside.

In which Scheherazade tells of how desolation invaded men : “It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that a Judge will cry instead of giving out her sentence. A runaway murderer will wander through the land for over forty days and will teletransport himself to escape the Guard while dreaming of prostitutes and partridges. A wounded cow will reminisce about a thousand-year-old olive tree while saying what she must say, which will sound none less than sad !

A jobless young couple, Yoshigi and Tsutue, wind up at the outskirts of the Suzaki red-light district in Tokyo. Tsutue talks her way into a job pouring sake for male customers at a small bar run by a sympathetic older woman, while Yoshigi is shunted off into a nearby noodle shop, where he gets a job delivering noodles. Tsutue charms and runs off with one of her clients. Yoshigi, ignoring the attentions of a sweet co-worker, pursues Tsutue.

A bad day gets worse for young detective Murakami when a pickpocket steals his gun on a hot, crowded bus. Desperate to right the wrong, he goes undercover, scavenging Tokyo’s sweltering streets for the stray dog whose desperation has led him to a life of crime. With each step, cop and criminal’s lives become more intertwined and the investigation becomes an examination of Murakami’s own dark side.

Doctor Sanada treats gangster Matsunaga after he is wounded in a gunfight, and discovers that he is suffering from tuberculosis. Sanada tries to convince Matsunaga to stay for treatment, which would drastically change his lifestyle. They form an uneasy friendship until Matsunaga's old boss Okada returns from prison.

Aspiring to an easy job as personal physician to a wealthy family, Noboru Yasumoto is disappointed when his first post after medical school takes him to a small country clinic under the gruff doctor Red Beard. Yasumoto rebels in numerous ways, but Red Beard proves a wise and patient teacher. He gradually introduces his student to the unglamorous side of the profession, ultimately assigning him to care for a prostitute rescued from a local brothel.

Based on the life of Hyakken Uchida, a Japanese author and academic. The film opens with Uchida resigning his job as a German professor at the onset of WWII. The story is told mostly in vignettes as he is cared for by former students in his old age.

Mum and Dad, and their 'adopted' children, Birdie & Elbie, work at the airport. The family live off whatever they scavenge from cargo holds, offices and hotels - including a steady stream of transient workers who populate the airport's soulless hub. When Lena, a young Polish office cleaner, is befriended by Birdie, she gets drawn into a nightmarish world of torture, murder and perversity.

It's early autumn and Dr. Headley eagerly demonstrates what seems to be a miraculous cure for tuberculosis. Not far from where he is working, the disease seems preparing to soon claim yet another life, a teenage girl named Winifred. Winifred's mother and little sister Trixie are devastated. When Trixie hears the family doctor say of Winifred that "when the last leaf falls, she will have passed away," she interprets the doctor's words literally. Thinking over what she has heard, she determines to do everything possible to save her sister.

A wealthy Iranian family struggles to contain a teenager's growing sexual rebellion and her brother's newfound conservatism.

A perfect typical LA couple find their happily-ever-after life broken when Zach confronts his long-repressed attraction for other men.

The story centers on an elderly hibakusha, whose husband was one of 80,000 human beings killed in the 1945 atomic bombing of Nagasaki, caring for her four grandchildren over the summer. She learns of a long-lost brother, Suzujiro, living in Hawaii who wants her to visit him before he dies.

Lisbon, 1938. Mr. Pereira is the editor of the culture section of an evening paper. Although fascism is on the rise in Europe, like in nearby civil war Spain or even inside Portugal itself in the form of Salazar's regime, Pereira only concerns himself with writing bios and translating French novels. Things change after he hires a young writer as his assistant, getting to know also his girlfriend – both opponents to the regime – and reluctantly helps them when they begin to get in trouble for subversive activities. Eventually, he's forced to take a stand...

Five bizarre stories with no apparent connection to one and other eventually become intertwined, resulting in surreal circumstances.

A military explorer meets and befriends a Goldi man in Russia’s unmapped forests. A deep and abiding bond evolves between the two men, one civilized in the usual sense, the other at home in the glacial Siberian woods.

Gianni is a middle-aged man living in Rome with his imposing and demanding elderly mother. His only outlet from her and the increasing debt into which they are sinking, are the increasingly frequent quiet sessions at the local tavern. As an Oriental saying goes, 'Moments of crisis are moments of opportunities'. These appear during the celebration of the holiday of Ferragosto on 15 August. That's when everybody leaves town to have fun. Opportunity knocks on Gianni's door in the most unexpected way.

Unofficial lawman John Corbett hunts down Cuchillo Sanchez, a Mexican peasant accused of raping and killing a 12-year-old girl.

Two drifters bum around, visit earthy women and discuss opening a car wash in Pittsburgh.