Strange Friends

Years after her boyfriend left her for the big city and promised to bring her there after he’s settled down, a Chinese woman sets out on a journey to be reunited with him.

In Chengdu, China, a retired female opera singer named Master Chang takes in a trio of young tenants into her boarding home. The tenants include a rock singer and a college student who has run away from home.

A movie fan escapes from a labour camp during the Chinese Cultural Revolution and strikes up a relationship with a homeless female vagabond.

A woman embarks on a journey alone across the United States after fleeing from her violent husband.

As Islamic morality squads stage arbitrary raids in Tehran and as fundamentalists seize hold of the universities, Azar Nafisi, an inspired teacher, secretly gathers six of her most committed female students to read forbidden western classics. Unaccustomed to being asked to speak their minds, they soon removed their veils, their stories intertwining with the novels they read: just like the heroines of Nabokov, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry James or Jane Austen, the women in Nafisi’s living room dare to dream, hope and love as we experience the complexity of the lives of individuals facing political, moral and personal siege.

Gentle and broken, a homeless man fights others on video for money but soon finds comfort in an unlikely friend and the lost diary of a young girl.

An unrecognizable, charred corpse discovered in a remote mountain village in China connects three local stories.

A street vendor with a grim home-life forges a connection with a young woman on her way to Paris.

On the edge of the Gobi desert in Northwest China, Lang returns to his hometown after being released from jail. While working for the local dog patrol team to clear the town of stray dogs before the Olympic Games, he strikes up an unlikely connection with a black dog. These two lonely souls embark on a journey together.

A man reflects on the lost love of his youth and his long-ago journey from Taiwan to America as he begins to reconnect with his estranged daughter.

A jazz musician seeks refuge from a lynch mob on a remote island, where he meets a hostile game warden and the young object of his attentions.

Alone in her empty flat, from her window Anne observes the people passing by who nervously snatch up the personal belongings and pieces of furniture she has put out on the pavement. Her final gesture of taking a ring off her finger signals she is leaving her previous life in Holland behind. She goes to Ireland, where she chooses to lead a solitary, wandering existence, striding through the austere landscapes of Connemara. During her travels, she discovers a house that is home to a hermit, Martin.

Three Chinese friends build a successful English language school to help Chinese teenagers fulfil their dreams.

Evangelist Carlton Pearson is ostracized by his church for preaching that there is no Hell.

A high school student suffers from a strange amnesia, causing her memories to only last a week. After she befriends a new student, his kindness and persistence make her gradually open up.

When three friends open a hot pot restaurant in a former bomb shelter, they discover it’s linked by a single wall to the bank vault next door. While deciding to take the easy money or go to the police, they find out one of the bank’s employees is a former classmate and look to enlist her in deciding their future.

A small town pickpocket whose friends have moved on to higher trades finds himself bitter and unable to adapt.

While serving life in prison, a young man looks back at the people, the circumstances and the system that set him on the path toward his crime.

Young teen girl Xiu Xiu is sent away to a remote corner of the Sichuan steppes for manual labor in 1975 (sending young people to there was a part of Cultural Revolution in China). A year later, she agrees to go to even more remote spot with a Tibetan saddle tramp Lao Jin to learn horse herding.

A young man with a bright future suffers a near-fatal accident and recreates his new life with the help of an unlikely animal friend.