Movies: Misery

Impoverished priest Harihar Ray, dreaming of a better life for himself and his family, leaves his rural Bengal village in search of work. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with The Film Foundation in 1996....

The story of a donkey Balthazar as he is passed from owner to owner, some kind and some cruel but all with motivations beyond his understanding. Balthazar, whose life parallels that of his first keeper, Marie, is truly a beast of burden, suffering th...

In the late 19th century, a former high school teacher turned unionist tries to organize workers laboring with inhuman conditions at a textile factory....

A tomato is planted, harvested and sold at a supermarket, but it rots and ends up in the trash. But it doesn’t end there: Isle of Flowers follows it up until its real end, among animals, trash, women and children. And then the difference between toma...

Two women get on the highway heading to Santa Fe. Marilyn dreams of winning a contest held by a famous belly dancing company, while her friend, Mona, has a darker secret....

A boy, abducted and abused for eight years returns home to find that the experience remains an indelible part of him....

Do you have to be miserable to be funny? More than sixty comedians—including stand-ups, writers, actors, and directors from the US, Canada, and abroad—take on this question, sharing anecdotes and insights with lively enthusiasm....

A young journalist interviews an elderly woman about being forced into prostitution in Borneo at a brothel called Sandakan No. 8....

On the one hand, there’s the desert eating away at the land. The endless dry season, the lack of water. On the other there’s the threat of war. The village well has run dry. The livestock is dying. Trusting their instinct, most of the villagers leave...

In 1960, Martín and Marcos are forced by their difficult personal circumstances to travel to Switzerland in search of work, leaving their families in the Madrid of Franco's Spain. But they undertake more than a simple journey; they begin the road to ...

Portrayal of a family’s attempt to change the spending habit of the indulgent and hedonistic patriarch, Alfredo. The family decides to try to fool him into spending less by telling him that his large fortune is gone....

Hanna secretly joins a group called The Onania Club. Its members, strong independent L.A. women, get aroused by the misery of others. Hanna meets more misery than she could ever hope for and in the process loses everything she cares for....

Pedro Gonzalez first gets into trouble as part of a criminal gang and then works honourably to become rich. Money is his undoing allowing him to become a womanizer and drinker, almost losing his wife. Finally he rejoins her, they have a son and he pa...

Flower Buds tells the story of the gradual breakdown of a family living in a small town. Each character lives according to his or her own ideals. Agata wants a happy life far from home, fully aware that her only hope is to escape and therefore betray...

In another indictment of the flaws of our so-called civilization, this satire from the late director Marco Ferreri features Christopher Lambert as Michel, a miserable man who has failed at love and finds solace in a mechanical key holder....

The struggle to survive, for a generation, torn between wanting to leave its country, yet bound by blood to home....

Alone on the moon, a dying astronaut faces his past regrets and lost love as the earth sets over the horizon....

A snapshot of the state of the Danish nation: in one of the stories, a woman enters a pole-sitting contest in a desperate bid to reinvent herself. Another is about Erik, whose wife has been lobbying a Better Homes and Gardens type magazine to do a sp...

A Swiss nun falls in love with a Japanese engineer....

The film is a controversy on democracy. Is our society really democratic? Can everyone be part of it? Or is the act of being part in democracy dependent to the access on technology, progression or any resources of information, as philosophers like Pa...