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.
In late 19th century Tokyo, Kikunosuke Onoue, the adopted son of a legendary actor, himself an actor specializing in female roles, discovers that he is only praised for his acting due to his status as his father's heir. Devastated by this, he turns to Otoku, a servant of his family, for comfort, and they fall in love. Kikunosuke becomes determined to leave home and develop as an actor on his own merits, and Otoku faithfully follows him.
A Russian poet, Andrei and his interpreter, Eugenia travel to Italy to research the life of an 18th-century composer.
When the wife of a 17th century Kyoto scroll-maker is falsely accused of having an affair with his best employee, the pair flee the city and find themselves falling for one another.
A joinery instructor at a rehab center refuses to take a new teen as his apprentice, but then begins to follow the boy through the hallways and streets.
Nanni Moretti takes another look at the ebbs and flows of life in April 1996, as he becomes a father for the first time and seems unable to focus on his documentary about the upcoming national elections.
The story of a poor young woman, separated by prejudice from her husband and baby, is interwoven with tales of intolerance from throughout history.
Escaped convicts terrorize a suburban family they're holding hostage.
The friendship between two orphans endures even though they grow up on opposite sides of the law and fall in love with the same woman.
June 1998: After spending two years in a coma caused by a traffic accident, Shiki Ryougi awakens with amnesia. She is visited by Touko Aozaki, a wizard and proprietor of a studio called Garan no Dou. Shiki has lost not only the memory of her accident, but also any real sense that she's even alive. Strangely, enigmatic beings begin to attack her...
A teenager named Noriko Shimabara runs away from her family in Toyokawa, to meet Kumiko, the leader of an Internet BBS, Haikyo.com. She becomes involved with Kumiko's family circle, which grows darker after the mass suicide of 54 high school girls.
Having fathered an illegitimate child with his lover, Marie, feckless soldier Franz Woyzeck takes odd jobs around his small town to provide some extra money for them. One of them is volunteering for experiments conducted by a local doctor, who puts Woyzeck on a diet of peas. This serves to drive him close to madness, and the discovery that Marie is involved in an affair with the local drum major exacerbates the situation. Pushed too far, Woyzeck resorts to violence.
A lawyer tasked with defending a robbery-and-murder suspect begins developing doubts about what truly happened.
Silence dominates the work, as does the screen rectangle, which cuts off the “image” from a life time-space continuum and imposes upon the image its particular character. Within it, there is a play between tonalities, textures, large and small shapes.
After inheriting the family mortuary, a pyrophobic mortician accidentally exposes hundreds of un-cremated bodies to toxic medical waste. As the corpses re-animate, the mortician's inheritance-seeking younger brother unexpectantly shows up, stumbling upon a full zombie outbreak!
March 1999: Mikiya Kokutou meets Shiki Ryougi again at the same place where he met her for the first time four years ago...
Old professional killer Wagner seeks someone to teach what he knows as long as he is already dying, and he chooses Max, young and passionless thief to be his successor.
A young couples lives are turned upside down when the birth of their first child is accompanied by terrifying entities that threaten their newly formed family.
Retired Englishman George Hall's hypochondria worsens and takes its toll on his family.
Three people, each having different aspirations from life, are caught in a tangle of emotions and don’t know the way out. There’s a husband and wife with love eroding from their life. And there’s a single, happy-go-lucky dude who falls in love with the wife.