Grinding, gruelling and unceasing, Dennis Barker's training sessions push his young swimmers to the limits of their endurance. Outstanding among them is 14-year-old Rachel Southern. Destined for stardom perhaps, but also destined to realise that winning doesn't always mean coming first.
25 years ago a mother and father went missing and were presumed murdered on Wolfe Island and their bodies never found, and now a tabloid journalist and a woman who may have a connection to the Island are out to find out Whodunit?
This film deals with the contrasts of the Wilhelminian era in Berlin: the splendor of the monarchy, the economic and intellectual vitality of the up-and-coming imperial capital on the one hand, and the misery of the proletarians in the tenements on the other.
Nathaniel Box, a self-styled prophet, along with his daughter Barbara and her fiancé Curtis, holds a night time press conference in an underground car park, devoutly believing that "a new Messiah for a New Age" will appear there before dawn - and their wait does not go unrewarded.
Writes Viola: "Sodium Vapor was recorded over a period of several weeks in the hours between one and five in the morning on the streets of an industrial area in lower Manhattan.
Plumber Martin and his younger colleague Frank are on call on Christmas Eve of all days. Frank's girlfriend Regina, who is expecting her first baby at any moment, is anything but thrilled.