The story is set at the beginning of the 20th century in Sicily. Salvatore, a very poor farmer, and a widower, decides to emigrate to the US with all his family, including his old mother. Before they embark, they meet Lucy. She is supposed to be a British lady and wants to come back to the States. Lucy, or Luce as Salvatore calls her, for unknown reasons wants to marry someone before to arrive to Ellis Island in New York. Salvatore accepts the proposal. Once they arrive in Ellis Island they spend the quarantine period trying to pass the examinations to be admitted to the States. Tests are not so simple for poor farmers coming from Sicily. Their destiny is in the hands of the custom officers.

Rather than choosing a great leader or king, God chooses Abraham, an elderly shepherd from Mesopotamia, as the way to establish his Covenant with mankind... A man of great faith, Abraham continues to believe in God even when He seems to have abandoned him.

Costanza is drinking a beer in a Prague pub, a summer night in 1968, while a violinist enters and starts playing a "canone inverso" for her. It is not a case, that music and that violin have a story behind that could concern her. It is the love story between Jeno Varga and the music, between Jeno and Sophie.

After the bankruptcy of their father's stonemasonry firm, brothers Nicola and Andrea emigrate to America to restore their fortunes. After many adventures and near-disasters, they end up in Hollywood designing sets for D.W.Griffith and marry beautiful actresses, but tragedy strikes with the arrival of World War I, which finds the brothers fighting on opposite sides...

What begins as an innocent art class becomes a steamy triangle of erotic passions and forbidden love. A beautiful Japanese girl becomes the object of obsession in a devious relationship between the wife of a German diplomat and her husband.

The enthusiasms, fears, joys and disappointments of the (private and professional) life of a well-known group of boys fond of physics and mathematics, who just made history as the Via Panisperna boys.

The daughter of a known filmaker finds herself in her father's family home, with the whole family.

A legend of Argentine rock travels to Iquitos to find an old Healer and participate in his Ayahuasca ceremony. You will have to go through the jungle and your own ghosts, on your way to healing.

The people of Jerusalem are suffering under the reign of Herod, and are hoping to be delivered from the Roman occupiers by the Messiah whose arrival, it is rumored, is to take place very soon. Unlike his nephew Judas, who wants to join the zealots (freedom fighters), 35 year old widower Joseph is not interested in participating in any fighting against the Romans.

After the 8th September 1943 north of Italy is occupied by Germans. Italian army collapsed and the soldiers are escaped to the mountains trying to set up a resistance. Many civilians did the same and Johnny, an English literature student, is among them. Johnny avoids to band together the red partisans (communists) and tries to be part of the azure bands (former regular soldiers). But in both cases he is deluded by the partisan bands and discovers that the partisan war is less poetic and genuine that he thought. At one point anyway the partisans free Alba from Germans. When the city falls again in German hands Johnny escape with Ettore and Pierre. But, one after another, German army and Italian fascists captures the partisans and Johnny will pass the winter alone and isolated. He then finds the way to participate to one of the last attack to occupants, in fact the war will be over two months later.

A Sardinian fisherman has promised the moon to the woman he loves. And Sardinian men always keep their promises.

During a trip to the USA Carla falls in love with Charles, an ex-punk rocker now working as a security guard. She returns to Torino, Italy, and breaks the bad news to Francesco, her fiancee; they have a fight, she leaves him and apparently disappears.

A photographer makes a journey to East Europe to document traces of the past, birth of the new, recovery of long forgotten traditions.

Four lighthearted stories set in the idyllic Italian countryside: an old grouch is befriended by a stray dog; a lonely widow spies on her newly-wed son and daughter-in-law; a German tourist tries to seduce a younger nurse. The fourth segment was cut in the US by its distributor Miramax.

A shepherd from the mountains of a remote Asian region travels to Southern Italy, in love with what he saw on Italian television. There, he accidentally ends up in a holiday resort, where he's treated like a guest for a whole day, thus cementing his assumption that all the opulence and kindness he saw on TV were true.

A film from 1990.

Surreal giallo about a delusional student who thinks he's discovered the identity of a serial killer.

France, 1915. Young and radiantly beautiful Centaine de Thiry is the happiest woman in the world: in a few more hours she will be married to pilot Michael Courteney, the love of her life. But fate has it otherwise: Michael is shot down in a reconnaissance plane shortly before his wedding. Life has lost its meaning for Centaine. When the young woman realizes soon afterwards that she is expecting a baby, her zest for live is revived. She decides to give birth to the child in South Africa, the home country of her deceased fiancé.

In 1943, a group of Italian and Allied soldiers find themselves trapped inside an abandoned villa. When they discover that they are in fact dead and that the villa is the starting point of their journey into afterlife, each character tells his life story, united in the belief that they have died unjustly in a senseless war. The youngest, whose wife is expecting a child, wants to return to the world.

After their son dies, a Jewish family moves from London to Israel in an attempt to piece their lives back together. The mother finds a way out of her depression through a relationship with a younger man—which doesn't seem to bother her husband. Meanwhile, their daughter begins dating a Palestinian handyman.

A wave of anonymous attacks will capriciously unite the stories, leading them towards an inexorable end.