WDR/Arte

When a beautiful young Grace arrives in the isolated township of Dogville, the small community agrees to hide her from a gang of ruthless gangsters, and, in return, Grace agrees to do odd jobs for the townspeople.

Maureen, mid-20s, is a personal shopper for a media celebrity. The job pays for her stay in Paris, a city she refuses to leave until she makes contact with her twin brother who previously died there. Her life becomes more complicated when a mysterious person contacts her via text message.

A sea captain makes a bet in a cafe with a friend that he will marry the first woman who walks in.

We follow 24 hours in the life of a being moving from life to life like a cold and solitary assassin moving from hit to hit. In each of these interwoven lives, the being possesses an entirely distinct identity: sometimes a man, sometimes a woman, sometimes youthful, sometimes old. By turns murderer, beggar, company chairman, monstrous creature, worker, family man.

In the Swedish city of Lethe, people from different walks of life take part in a series of short, deadpan vignettes that rush past. Some are just seconds long, none longer than a couple of minutes. A young woman remembers a fantasy honeymoon with a rock guitarist. A man awakes from a dream about bomber planes. A businessman boasts about success while being robbed by a pickpocket, and so on. The absurdist collection is accompanied by Dixieland jazz and similar music.

Professional criminal Trojan returns to Berlin in search of a new job after a failed coup. He cannot refuse the lucrative offer of a painting theft. But the meticulously planned action soon gets out of hand and it's all about survival.

Through interviews with both victims and instigators, Nanfu Wang, a first-time mother, breaks open decades of silence on a vast, unprecedented social experiment that shaped — and destroyed — countless lives in China.

A ghost and a French marquis wander through the Winter Palace in St Petersburg, encountering scenes from many different periods of its history.

A 15-year-old discovers the joys and heartaches of first love with an older teen, but in the ensuing years, cannot seem to move past their breakup.

Summer, 1910. Inspectors Machin and Malfoy investigate the mysterious disappearances of several tourists on the beautiful beaches of Slack Bay, where a strange community of fishermen lives.

Some young folks, tired of the society they're living in, plan a bomb attack over Paris before taking shelter for a night in a shopping center.

Three distinct tales unfold in the bustling city of Tokyo. Merde, a bizarre sewer-dweller, emerges from a manhole and begins terrorizing pedestrians. After his arrest, he stands trial and lashes out at a hostile courtroom. A man who has resigned himself to a life of solitude reconsiders after meeting a charming pizza delivery woman. And finally, a happy young couple find themselves undergoing a series of frightening metamorphoses.

In South Yorkshire, a small group of railway maintenance men discover that because of privatization, their lives will never be the same. When the trusty British Rail sign is replaced by one reading East Midland Infrastructure, it is clear that there will be the inevitable winners and losers as downsizing and efficiency become the new buzzwords.

Exil tells the story of a chemical engineer of foreign origin who feels discriminated and bullied at work, plunging him into an identity crisis.

Fanny, a shy and lonely teenager, goes on a language exchange to Germany. In Leipzig, she meets her pen pal, Lena, a teenager eager to become politically active. Fanny is troubled. To win over Lena, she invents a life for herself, to the extent of becoming trapped in her lies.

The O'Neills lived happily in their house in the Australian countryside. That was until one day fate struck blindly, taking the life of Peter, the father, leaving his grief-stricken wife Dawn alone with their four children. Among them, eight-year-old Simone denies this reality. She is persuaded that her father still lives in the giant fig tree growing near their house and speaks to her through its leaves. But the tree becomes more and more invasive and threatens the house. It must be felled. Of course, Simone won't allow it.

This exploration of Japan's fascination with girl bands and their music follows an aspiring pop singer and her fans, delving into the cultural obsession with young female sexuality and the growing disconnect between men and women in hypermodern societies.

Abandoned at birth in the Greek mountains on a stormy night, Jon is taken in and adopted, without having known his father or mother. As a young man, he meets Iro, a warden in the prison where he is incarcerated after a deadly tragic accident. She seems to seek out his presence, takes care of him, records music for him. Jon’s eyesight begins to fail … From then on, for every loss he suffers, he will gain something in return. Thus, in spite of going blind, he will live his life more fully than ever.

A young investigative journalist and his fiancée are brutally murdered in their home in Slovakia. Their deaths inspire the biggest protests in Slovakia since the fall of communism. The story takes an unexpected turn when a source leaks the secret murder case file to the murdered journalist’s colleagues. It includes the computers and encrypted communications of the assassination’s alleged mastermind, a businessman closely connected to the country’s ruling party. Trawling these encrypted messages, journalists discover that their country has been captured by corrupt oligarchs, judges and law enforcement officials. A reckoning awaits.

Joan Jett & The Blackhearts support I Love Rock 'n Roll with a 30-minute concert filmed in Dortmund, Germany in 1982 and aired on ZDF RockPop in Concert. Setlist: 01. Intro by Fritz Egner 02. (I'm Gonna) Run Away 03. Wooly Bully 04. Victim of Circumstance 05. I Love Rock 'N Roll 06. Nag 07. Crimson and Clover 08. Do You Wanna Touch Me 09. Shout