Raul Ruiz's masterful adaptation of the eponymous nineteenth-century Portuguese novel. The core story centers on Joao, the bastard child of an ill-fated romance between two members of the aristocracy who are forbidden to marry, and his quest to discover the truth of his parentage. But this is just the start of an engrossing tale that follows a multitude of characters whose fates conjoin, separate and then rejoin again over three decades in Portugal,...

Set in the 19th century, the illegitimate son of a British aristocrat, Benjamin Blake, is forced into servitude by a wicked uncle. As a rebellious young man, Benjamin falls for a beautiful aristocrat and is beaten as punishment. Fleeing his tyrannical uncle, Benjamin stows away on a ship and lands on an idyllic South Pacific island. There he romances an exotic native beauty and earns a fortune diving for pearls with a fellow shipmate. But Benjamin's...

Europe 1990. The Berlin Wall has just crumbled: Katrine, raised in East Germany, but now living in Norway for the last 20 years, is a "war child." The result of a romance between a Norwegian woman and a German occupation soldier during World War II. She enjoys a happy family life with her mother, her husband, daughter and granddaughter. But when a lawyer asks her and her mother to testify in a trial against the Norwegian state on behalf of the war...

Captures the lives and passions of the Compsons, a once proud Southern family caught in a tragic spiral of loss and misfortune. Encapsulates the universal theme of the death of honor, social injustice and forbidden love.

Bearing a child out of wedlock was punishable in 17th century Massachusetts by being forced to wear a scarlet letter 'A,' but unwed mother Hester Prynne, who was born to a noble family, is determined to rise above her situation.