When disillusioned Swedish knight Antonius Block returns home from the Crusades to find his country in the grips of the Black Death, he challenges Death to a chess match for his life. Tormented by the belief that God does not exist, Block sets off on a journey, meeting up with traveling players Jof and his wife, Mia, and becoming deter...

After two American prisoners are killed by guards in the act of escaping from a German POW camp in World War II, barracks black marketeer J.J. Sefton is suspected of being an informer.

In 1945 Germany, following the end of World War II, Leopold Kessler, an American of German descent, is hired by his uncle as a sleeping car conductor on the Zentropa train line. Leopold's wish is to be neutral to the ongoing purges of loyalists by Allied forces and do what he can to help a hurting country, but ultimately finds himself ...

Death and violence anger twelve year old drug courier Fresh, who sets his rival employers against each other.

A seven-year-old chess prodigy refuses to harden himself in order to become a champion like the famous but unlikable Bobby Fischer.