Sixty five years old Abdelkader Silimani, an Algerian Muslim living in France, after inadvertently witnessing a murder, closely escapes from the murderers by hiding out into a mosque. The black leather dressed masked murderers, with their firearms in hand, do not hesitate to enter the mosque full of praying men looking for the eyewitness. They leave empty handed but determined not to give up their search.

During the Second Napoleonic Empire, Etienne Lantier finds employment as a coal miner in the northern French town of Montsou. He immediately encounters misery and degradation in the appalling conditions of the mine. There he meets men as unscrupulous as Chaval and, conversely, as generous as Maheu. In fact, a whole range of suffering humanity, laboring under the curse of capitalism.

An artist near the end of his career finds new inspiration in a young model. A famous and well-respected artist who lives in a comfortable estate in the French countryside, at the age of 60, considers his career as a painter to be over. He no longer feels inspired to create, and his last attempt at a major work, a nude study of his wife Liza, has sat unfinished for ten years. His protégé suggests a more inspiring subject, who exchanges ideas and...

With the help of alley cat Tom O'Malley, a family of Parisian cats set to inherit a fortune from their owner try to make it back home after the greedy butler kidnaps them and leaves them in the country.

An actress, deserted by her husband, meets a young photographer. They quickly become lovers and live together for two weeks in a hotel room. Then her husband discovers the affair.

Catherine hires the illiterate Sophie to work as her maid at her remote home in the French countryside. But Sophie soon falls under the influence of the mysterious Jeanne and suddenly the stage is set for murder, violence and betrayal.

Raised in a brothel, then wrested from the only life she knew by her father, so they could join the circus, Edith Piaf spent her teen years on the streets. She is finally "rescued" by a crime figure who gives her career a start and, ultimately, by her international success and final illness. Always frail, sickly, malnourished, and wildly temperamental, she was often on drugs or alcohol and was always in search of true love. Middleweight boxer, Marcel...

Seaside takes place in a small coastal town on the Bay of Somme where the year-round inhabitants find ways to make their lives work. From the stories presented, aided by close, revealing observations, we see a community perched between transition and stasis.

A Jewish boy living in Nazi-occupied Paris is sent by his parents to the countryside to live with an elderly Catholic couple until France's liberation. Forced to hide his identity, eight-year-old Claude bonds with the irascible, staunchly anti-Semitic Grampa, who improbably becomes his friend and confidant.