When a man stops at a motel one evening in 1961, his tormenting behavior drives one of the people present at the motel to remember his experiences in a concentration camp during WWII.
After a baron steals his scientific discoveries, runs away with his wife, and slaps him in public, a man joins a Parisian circus sideshow as a clown whose act consists of being slapped repeatedly and becomes infatuated with a showgirl colleague whose father intends to marry her off to the baron.
Bootleggers on the lam Frankie and Noll split up to evade capture by the police. Frankie is caught and jailed, but Noll manages to escape and open a posh New York City nightclub.
Mauri Miettinen and his wife Anja are living in a happy marriage. Everything changes when Mauri's old acquaintance comes to visit and threatens to reveal Anja's dark past.
Three soccer fans are determined to do literally anything to get to the soccer match between Czechoslovakia and the famous representation team of Brazil.
March, 1945: The insecure and hesitant reserve lieutenant Felix Bleck receives orders to lead a transport of 40 prisoners to the Western Front, where the men are to be burned up in a punishment battalion.