From his offices in Switzerland, Russian Igor Lipovsky is engaged in a vast and profitable gunrunning operation with Africa. The French government wants to hinder the activities of the arms dealer and sends a team to sink one of his ships heading for Angola with a load of illegal weaponry. Lisa, Brisseau, Loïc, Tony and Raymond are professionals: they carefully set up their cover, plan all their moves meticulously, and carry out orders without asking questions. Perhaps they should. The code-name of the mission is "Janus"; and just like with the ancient deity, there are two opposite faces for every aspect of the operation: the objective of the French government, the role of each team member, the presumed friend and the assumed foe...
Elba island, 1814. Martino is a young teacher, idealist and strongly anti Napoleon, in love with the beautiful and noble Baroness Emily. The young man finds himself serving as librarian to the Great Emperor in exile, whom he deeply hates, yet soon begins recording Napoleon's memoirs, getting to know and learning to value the man behind the myth. Among seductions and affairs, expectations and fears, he will craft a precise portrait that nevertheless will not manage to hide a final, inevitable, disappointment.
After many years spent in prison, Pitou returns back to his native town of Marseille. He couldn't even imagine all the disappointments he would face there.
Professional pickpocket Franck Spadone and his co-horts rob a beautiful stripper (played by Monica Bellucci). But Spadone becomes infatuated with his victim, and soon finds himself in the midst of a gang war because of his affections for her.
After winning the lottery, François goes to a bar in Pigalle and offers one hundred thousand Euros per month to a prostitute named Daniela to live with him as his wife until his money runs out.
Events over the course of one traumatic night in Paris unfold in reverse-chronological order as the beautiful Alex is brutally raped and beaten by a stranger in the underpass. Her boyfriend and ex-lover take matters into their own hands by hiring two criminals to help them find the rapist so that they can exact revenge. A simultaneously beautiful and terrible examination of the destructive nature of cause and effect, and how time destroys everything.
A group of young Muslim men living in Sheffield decide to wage jihad, and they hatch an inept plan to become suicide bombers. Omar and Waj have a brief, disastrous run at a Pakistan training camp, while Faisal works on an unlikely scheme to train birds to carry bombs. Their ill-conceived plan culminates at the London Marathon with their bumbling attempts to disrupt the event while dressed in outlandish costumes.
Five short stories loosely dealing with the roles of women in society. A superstar actress travels to a mountain resort, only to evoke jealousy from women and lust from men. A woman offers to take an injured man to the hospital. A widowed father and his son seek for a new wife/mother. A man seeks revenge for a woman's honor. A bored housewife tries to explain to her husband that he's not as romantic as he used to be.
The destiny of Sergio Leone from his poor childhood in a neighborhood under fascism in Rome until his last film in America. This guided the filmmaker's personal life and career to create his epic antiheroes and spaghetti westerns.