Bornholm island in 1880, where quarry worker Johan Jönsson lives a miserable life with his wife and children. He hopes to escape his poverty by winning a lottery ticket. But it doesn't bring him any luck. Instead of spending his little money on a doctor to have his sick child treated, he extends the lottery ticket. The child dies and Johan, plagued by remorse, turns to alcohol. After he has gambled away everything, the lottery ticket brings someone else the main prize. Johan commits suicide, but his son Per has realized that gambling is not the way to change the miserable existence of the workers.
16-year-old Mari, raised without a mother by a drunkard father, is put in an orphanage which she immediately, though unsuccessfully, tries to flee from.
Billy is released after five years in prison. In the next moment, he kidnaps teenage student Layla and visits his parents with her, pretending she is his girlfriend and they will soon marry.
World War I has left golfer Rannulph Junuh a poker-playing alcoholic, his perfect swing gone. Now, however, he needs to get it back to play in a tournament to save the financially ravaged golf course of a long-ago sweetheart.
Esther Blodgett is just another starry-eyed farm kid trying to break into the movies. Waitressing at a Hollywood party, she catches the eye of her idol Norman Maine, is sent for a screen test, and before long attains stardom as newly minted Vicki Lester.
A professional poker player whose astounding luck at the table fails to translate into his lonesome love life attempts to win the World Series of Poker while simultaneously earning the affections of a beautiful Las Vegas singer.
Jean-Paul is a Frenchman who yearns to live in communist Czechoslovakia. His wish is granted when, mistaken as a masseur of a French boating team, he manages to elude the democratic authorities long enough to scamper over the Czech border.
1958: during the Russian campaign, a military priest is called upon to assist Private Baranowski, who has been sentenced to death for desertion, on his last night.
The Remi abandoned by his foster father sold to the troubadour Vasalis, in his living through the rural villages the people to entertain, gehoplen his three dogs and a monkey.
During the War of 1812 against Britain: General Andrew Jackson has only 1,200 men left to defend New Orleans when he learns that a British fleet will arrive with 60 ships and 16,000 men to take the city.
