Set in the South just after the US Civil War, Laurel Sommersby is just managing to work the farm without her husband, believed killed in battle. By all accounts, Jack Sommersby was not a pleasant man, thus when he suddenly returns, Laurel has mixed emotions. It appears that Jack has changed a great deal, leading some people to believe that this is not actually Jack but an imposter. Laurel herself is unsure, but willing to take the man into her home, and perhaps later into her heart.

After ten years of war, plague and famine, the land is swept clean of people. The few remaining souls are scattered about, living in misery and lacking hope. An anxious silence hangs over the land. On one particularly starry night, two peasants find a stranger on the seashore.

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.

Johan and his family are Mennonites from the north of Mexico. Against the law of God and Man, Johan falls in love with another woman.

The story of Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata, who led a rebellion against the corrupt, oppressive dictatorship of president Porfirio Díaz in the early 20th century.

The epic tale of a class struggle in twentieth century Italy, as seen through the eyes of two childhood friends on opposing sides.

A strong-willed peasant girl is sent by her father to the estate of some local aristocrats to capitalize on a rumour that their families are from the same line. This fateful visit commences an epic narrative of sex, class, betrayal, and revenge.

When their bus is crippled on the side of a deserted road, a team of high school athletes discover an opponent they cannot defeat – and may not survive.

1950s Saigon through the eyes of Mui, a Vietnamese servant girl. At 10 years-old, Mui leaves her village to work for an affluent, troubled family. As she comes of age, Mui finds work in the household of a pianist she has admired since childhood, and finds their relationship growing in complexity.

In this remake the Bertolucci's 1900, Olmo Dalco and Alfredo Berlingheiri's complicated friendship and struggles with the constantly changing political scope are chronicled as well as the rise of fascism and the communist revolution.

At the edge of the Yangtze River, not far from the Three Gorges Dam, young men and women take up employment on a cruise ship, where they confront rising waters and a radically changing China.

Photographer Robert Kincaid wanders into the life of housewife Francesca Johnson for four days in the 1960s.