A struggling salesman takes custody of his son as he's poised to begin a life-changing professional career.
A neurotic worker ant in love with a rebellious princess rises to unlikely stardom when he switches places with a soldier. Signing up to march in a parade, he ends up under the command of a bloodthirsty general. But he's actually been enlisted to fight against a termite army.
Two drifters, one a gentle but slow giant, try to make money working the fields during the Depression so they can fulfill their dreams.
A gold prospector in Alaska struggles to survive the elements and win the heart of a dance hall girl.
A town in Fengjie county is gradually being demolished and flooded to make way for the Three Gorges Dam. A man and woman visit the town to locate their estranged spouses, and become witness to the societal changes.
David Carr is a British Communist who is unemployed. In 1936, when the Spanish Civil War begins, he decides to fight for the Republican side, a coalition of liberals, communists and anarchists, so he joins the POUM militia and witnesses firsthand the betrayal of the Spanish revolution by Stalin's followers and Moscow's orders.
When a western Pennsylvania auto plant is acquired by a Japanese company, brokering auto worker Hunt Stevenson faces the tricky challenge of mediating the assimilation of two clashing corporate cultures. At one end is the Japanese plant manager and the sycophant who is angling for his position. At the other, a number of disgruntled long-time union members struggle with the new exigencies of Japanese quality control.
In response to a sudden dismissal of staff, workers at a big retail store begin a protest against their employer's oppressive labor policies.
An Italian immigrant tries to make a new life in Switzerland, taking on a series of increasingly menial jobs in order to do it. He attempts to fit into his new home and society but fails at every turn. Unable to go home again, will his tenacity and optimism be enough to live on?
Kafka, an insurance worker gets embroiled in an underground group after a co-worker is murdered. The underground group is responsible for bombings all over town, attempting to thwart a secret organization that controls the major events in society. He eventually penetrates the secret organization and must confront them.
Angie is a working class woman. After being fired, she decides to set up a recruitment agency of her own, running it from her kitchen with her friend, Rose. Taking advantage of the desperation of immigrants, Angie builds a successful business extremely quickly.
Kaluna, a middle-class worker, who still lives with her parents and older siblings who are already married. She tries hard to save and live simply in order to realize her dream of buying and owning her own house. But the reality of her life as a sandwich generation who has to help support her extended family, coupled with her minimal income, makes it difficult to realize this dream. This condition makes Kaluna feel like she is not at home every time she comes home.
At WC Boggs' Lavatory factory, Vic Spanner is the union representative who calls a strike at the drop of a hat. However, eventually everyone gets fed up with him.
Julio, a young fisherman from a provincial village, descends into social alienation as he arrives in Manila to search for his loved one.
The American Dream becomes a nightmare for a group of undocumented day laborers hired by a wealthy couple. What they expect to be their biggest payday turns into a terrifying fight for survival.
A constant runaway is given over to the care of the state and finds herself in a remand centre for girls. She is soon caught between the uncaring bureaucracy, the sometimes brutal treatment from her peers and her own abusive family, and only one care worker sees her potential to rise above her tragic circumstances.
In 1923 British Colonial Nigeria, Mister Johnson is an oddity -- an educated black man who doesn't really fit in with the natives or the British. He works for the local British magistrate, and considers himself English, though he has never been to England. He is always scheming, trying to get ahead, which lands him in a lot of hot water.
In a parallel present, delivery man Ray Tincelli is struggling to support himself and his ailing younger brother. After a series of two-bit hustles and unsuccessful swindles, Ray takes a job in a strange new realm of the gig economy: trekking deep into the forest, pulling cable over miles of terrain to connect large, metal cubes that link together the new quantum trading market. As he gets pulled deeper into the zone, he encounters growing hostility and the threat of robot cablers, and must choose to either help his fellow workers or to get rich and get out.
Chronicle of the repression that a foreign company exerts on the miners of a small nitrate town in Chile, whose workers decide to claim their most essential rights. A reflection of the historic union struggles in the northern Chile that ended with terrible repressive acts.
Kieslowski’s later film Dworzec (Station, 1980) portrays the atmosphere at Central Station in Warsaw after the rush hour.