Seventeen talented Australian directors from diverse artistic disciplines each create a chapter of the hauntingly beautiful novel by multi award-winning author Tim Winton. The linking and overlapping stories explore the extraordinary turning points in ordinary people’s lives in a stunning portrait of a small coastal community. As characters face second thoughts and regret, relationships irretrievably alter, resolves are made or broken, and lives change direction forever.
Some twenty years ago, Sarita promised to raise her husband's love child, Shalu together with their own daughter, Nimmi. The girls grow up as the best of friends but Sarita has never been able to forgive Shalu for her background. It doesn't make it better when she sees Shalu getting close to the man Nimmi is also in love with.
In 1923 British Colonial Nigeria, Mister Johnson is an oddity -- an educated black man who doesn't really fit in with the natives or the British. He works for the local British magistrate, and considers himself English, though he has never been to England. He is always scheming, trying to get ahead, which lands him in a lot of hot water.
Something is missing in Tom's life. His marriage has lost its spark, his job is suffocating him, and his childhood best friend Dan still clings to the past. Every day he goes through the motions, becoming increasingly detached from those around him. Dan has the solution... something Tom's got to see to believe... tonight. What Dan shows him leaves Tom unsettled, flooding his mind with disturbing images, and binding the two friends together with its ugly secret.
Madeline Goddard, is a British double agent who meets and falls in love with a German spy Baron Karl Von Marwitz during World War I. This tale of espionage blends high adventure and romance making perfect order from wartime chaos and growing in faith from despair.
In early post-war Osaka, three women, war widow Fusako, her sister Natsuko, an expatriate from Korea, and Kumiko, Fusako's sister-in-law, descend into prostitution, all for their individual reasons.
In Paris during WWII, an Algerian immigrant is inspired to join the resistance by his unexpected friendship with a Jewish man. Based on not very known facts about the Muslim community in Paris during WWII, when the Paris Mosque and its dynamic leader played a pivotal role in supporting the resistance and rescuing Jews.
Mary Rutledge arrives from the east, finds her fiancé dead, and goes to work at the roulette wheel of Luis Chamalis' Bella Donna, a rowdy gambling house in San Francisco in the 1850s. She falls in love with miner Jim Carmichael and takes his gold dust at the wheel. She goes after him, Chamalis goes after her with intent to harm Carmichael.
An Austrian military officer and rogue attempts to seduce the wife of a surgeon. The two men confront each other in a test of abilities that ends surprisingly.
Unlikely friends in a melting pot of confusion. Simon Murray fights for the French Foreign Legion. Pascal Dupont fights for himself. War torn men question honour, hope, morality...because you can desert everything...except yourself.
A destitute WWI veteran is hired to help carry out restoration work on a medieval mural in a rural Yorkshire church. While living in the quiet village, he forms a close friendship with an archaeologist and begins to come to terms with his trauma.
Spain, 1938, during the Spanish Civil War. Carol, a 12-year-old Spanish-American girl, arrives in her mother's hometown and transforms the secretive family environment. Her innocence and rebellious nature drive her at first to reject a world that is at once foreign and completely new.
Convicted corporate criminal Howard engineers a prison break as he and a number of fellow inmates are being transferred to a new facility. The escapees storm a shopping mall and take a group of shoppers hostage (after killing many more of them) before making their demands. Only Rudy, a former mercenary and brother of one of the fugitives, can take out the criminals before more of the hostages die.
A young widow, Noriko, lives with her senile father-in-law, Shukichi, on a farm. He believes his favorite cow, long gone, is still alive. Noriko pretends to be the cow and lets him milk her – a satisfying arrangement for them both.
Claire of the Moon is set in the 1990s in the Pacific Northwest. Claire Jabrowski, a famous heterosexual author, decides to attend a retreat for all-female writers. Claire's rommate at the retreat is Dr. Noel Benedict, author of a book called The Naked Truth. The movie culminates in a sexual encounter between the two authors.
A romantic drama about a tight-knit group of college friends who graduated from NYU the year of 9/11 and reunite years later for a weekend wedding in Georgia. Unresolved conflicts and love affairs spark again.