Lazzaro (talented newcomer Adriano Tardiolo) is a beautiful peasant whose sweet nature makes people mistake him for simple-minded. He happily does the bidding of anyone in his local village, which is ruled over by the self-centred Marchesa (Nicoletta Braschi). He finds an unlikely friend in the Marchesa’s petulant son Tancredi, who convinces his hapless ally to help him stage a dramatic incident to secure a ransom from his mother. The film follows the adventures of this young man living on the margins of society, who can seemingly travel through time, arriving in the big city and appearing as a fragment of the past lost in the modern world.

When professor Walter Vale (Richard Jenkins) travels to New York for a lecture, he’s stunned to find illegal immigrants Tarek (Haaz Sleiman) and Zainab (Danai Gurira) living in his apartment. It turns out that it was fraudulently rented to them by a swindler, and Vale feels sufficiently sorry for them that he invites them to stay. They get on well until Tarek is accused of jumping a subway turnstile and lands in a detention centre. He risks being deported, and Vale does everything he can to prevent it.

Estrella Arenas (Icíar Bollaín), a rural Spanish teenager with a rich imagination, dreams of her mysterious father Agustín (Omero Antonutti), a man who in recent years has drifted away from her and her mother. Estrella struggles to piece together Agustín’s secret history and recalls her family’s sudden unexplained move from Seville in Spain, to the northern countryside when she was young. Estrella decides to return alone to the South, a place warped by years of her father’s hazy and nostalgic recollections.

Empress Elisabeth of Austria is idolised for her beauty and renowned for inspiring fashion trends. But in 1877, she celebrates her 40th birthday and must fight to maintain her public image by lacing her corset tighter and tighter. While Elisabeth’s role has been reduced against her wishes to purely performative, her hunger for knowledge and zest for life makes her more and more restless in Vienna. She travels to England and Bavaria, visiting former lovers and old friends, seeking the excitement and purpose of her youth. With a future of strictly ceremonial duties laid out in front of her, Elisabeth rebels against the hyperbolised image of herself and comes up with a plan to protect her legacy.

The Marx Brothers cause chaos in the world of opera when Otis B. Driftwood (Groucho Marx) meets aspiring singer Riccardo, who is determined to win the love of fellow performer Rosa. Aided by Fiorello (Chico Marx) and Tomasso (Harpo Marx), Otis attempts to unite the young couple, but faces opposition from the preening star Lassparri, who also has his sights on Rosa. Travelling from Italy to New York, Otis and friends rally to try and win the day. The first of five films the Marx Brothers made for MGM and was one of MGM’s biggest hits at the 1935 box office.

A young teacher in modern Bhutan, shirks his duties while planning to go to Australia to become a singer. As a reprimand, his superiors send him to the most remote school in the world, a glacial Himalayan village called Lunana, to complete his service. He finds himself exiled from his Westernised comforts after an arduous eight-day trek just to get there. There he finds no electricity, no textbooks, not even a blackboard. Though poor, the villagers extend a warm welcome to their new teacher, but he faces the daunting task of teaching the village children without any supplies. He wants to quit and go home, but he begins to learn of the hardship in the lives of the beautiful children he teaches, and begins to be transformed through the amazing spiritual strength of the villagers.