Marleen Gorris
During Stalin's reign of terror, Evgenia Ginzburg, a literature professor, was sent to 10 years hard labor in a gulag in Siberia. Having lost everything, and no longer wishing to live, she meets the camp doctor and begins to come back to life.
Based upon the novel by Vladimir Nabokov, a chess grandmaster travels to Italy in the 1920s to play in a tournament and falls in love.
Clarissa Dalloway looks back on her youth as she readies for a gathering at her house. The wife of a legislator and a doyenne of London's upper-crust party scene, Clarissa finds that the plight of ailing war veteran Septimus Warren Smith reminds her of a past romance with Peter Walsh. In flashbacks, young Clarissa explores her possibilities with Peter.
After World War II, Antonia and her daughter, Danielle, go back to their Dutch hometown, where Antonia's late mother has bestowed a small farm upon her. There, Antonia settles down and joins a tightly-knit but unusual community. Those around her include quirky friend Crooked Finger, would-be suitor Bas and, eventually for Antonia, a granddaughter and great-granddaughter who help create a strong family of empowered women.
In a brilliant, modern version of the classic shipwreck tale, director Marleen Gorris manages to capture both a gay male’s and feminist perspective. After a large airliner crashes on a deserted island killing most of the passengers, two women, five men and a dog survive: an Eastern European, a Canadian lawyer, a French biologist, a prosperous Scottish financier, a young American, an extrovert Australian and a major in the British army. Hopes of rescue fade as the survivors come to realise that the world may have suffered a major disaster. They have to rely on their own resources and at first manage to live harmoniously. But gradually tensions rise after a failed attempt to escape. Intolerance threatens their very existence as one of the men begins to put himself forward as the leader of the group.
A murderer is at large: a well-dressed businessman incarcerates his victims, chains and starves them, and documents their death amid their filth with Instamatic snaps. Meanwhile, in another part of town, a woman joins a brothel...
A court psychiatrist ponders three Dutchwomen, all strangers, on trial for killing a male shopkeeper.
