Stalin grasps a pencil in his hand as he prepares to draw a line on a map of the Soviet Union. Where the graphite touches paper, some 80,000 people— almost all of them Gulag inmates— will build a railroad in the gruelling conditions of the polar taiga.
To win the celebrity and self-made wealth he craves, an aimless, twenty-something Manhattan playboy devises a film based on his party-boy, club-going lifestyle, and hires a self-destructive aspiring playwright to ghost the feature script.
Antonia is a single mother who works as a hotel maid in Berlin. A normal hot summer day takes a dramatic turn when she crosses paths with a particular guest of the hotel, famous blind portrait painter Julius Pass.
Henry is a grouchy, irritable and overall unhappy birthday clown. As he complains about everything, he realizes 8-year-old birthday girl Coral has a frown just as long as his.
A young Russian woman, smuggled into America by human traffickers, and a notorious Egyptian transporter hired to drive her from the Mexican border to New York City, form an unlikely bond that transforms them and threatens to derail the traffickers' plans.
There's a new teacher in town—Spelunker! This unusual man is anything but a typical instructor, giving speeches about traffic safety to the students, reacting strangely to a humidifier, and enjoying lunch— albeit with ample condiment mishaps.