Set in tsarist Russia around the turn of the century and based on a true story of a Russian Jewish peasant Yakov Bok who was wrongly imprisoned for a most unlikely crime - the "ritual murder" of a Gentile child in Kiev. We witness the unrelenting detail of the peasant-handyman's life in prison and see him gain in dignity as the efforts to humiliate him and make him confess fail.
The tale of one of China's most famous dynasties begins with the amazing story of Hongwu, a peasant rebel who founded one of greatest eras in Chinese history. The film takes us to his great capital Nanjing, with its 21 miles of walls, each brick stamped with the name of the village that made it. Following the trail, we go to the Bao family village and see the villagers act a Ming murder story. Like many authoritarian states, the Ming were obsessive about architecture. We see the giant fortifications of the Great Wall, the ritual enclaves of the Forbidden City in Beijing and travel with bargeman Mr Hu down the Grand Canal, China's great artery of commerce right up to the present day.
The young and fragile Lia suffers from a deep depression. She is consumed by a sense of guilt due to an abortion. Her relationship with her boyfriend Viktor is getting worse and worse and in the last desperate attempt to cure herself, Lia goes to visit her old aunt Agata in her creepy 18th century villa.