The Translator

Five bizarre stories with no apparent connection to one another eventually become intertwined, resulting in surreal circumstances.

After a collision with a comet, a nearly 8km wide piece of the asteroid "Orpheus" is heading towards Earth. If it hits, it will cause an incredible catastrophe that will probably extinguish mankind. To stop the meteor, NASA wants to use the illegal nuclear weapon satellite "Hercules," but discovers soon that it doesn't have enough firepower. Their only chance to save the world is to join forces with the USSR, which has also launched such an illegal satellite. But will both governments agree?

An American writer moves to Paris to be closer to his daughter and finds himself falling immediately on hard times.

Alice, a young translator, finds the real world slowly merging with her recurring nightmares as she tries to solve the puzzle of her recent memory loss. A postcard leads her to the island of Garma where the locals seems to know her. Is she who she thinks she is? And what significance does her dream of an astronaut abandoned on the moon have?

A war veteran tries to investigate the murder of his son who was working as a Russian translator for the British intelligence service during the Cold War. He meets a web of deception and paranoia that seems impenetrable...

An interpreter is deceived into reading a passage from an ancient book that unleashes a demon that begins to possess people inside her home.

Petr Michal‘s meditative documentary follows the current life of an esteemed Czech literary translator, Anna Karenina. The film largely treats the relationship with her late husband, poet Petr Kabeš, and the feeling of loneliness she has been facing since his death. It is definitely not a conventional documentary portrait, since the director does not ask questions, and instead lets Karenina voice out her thoughts and feelings, observing her with a casual camera during work or on her mountaineering trips. The film also serves as an implicit proof of love to analogue medium: not only the book, but analogue film as well, with its invisible, yet almost tangible features.

Fadil is an Iraqi refugee who works as a telephone interpreter. From his attic room he translates calls between refugees and government agencies. At the start of every contact, he says: ‘I am your interpreter, I am impartial and will not interfere with this conversation.’ Even though Fadil lives in the Netherlands with his family, he knows people who still reside in war zones. How does it affect him when the witnessing of these conversations confront him with various dilemmas and let him relive his own past?

Donya, a lonely Afghan refugee and former translator, spends her twenties drifting through a meager existence in Fremont, California. Shuttling between her job writing fortunes for a fortune cookie factory and sessions with her eccentric therapist, Donya suffers from insomnia and survivor's guilt over those still left behind in Kabul as she desperately searches for love.

Bosnia, July 1995. Aida is a translator for the UN in the small town of Srebrenica. When the Serbian army takes over the town, her family is among the thousands of citizens looking for shelter in the UN camp. As an insider to the negotiations Aida has access to crucial information that she needs to interpret. What is at the horizon for her family and people – rescue or death? Which move should she take?

The era of wild capitalism was on the rise when Anatolii's wife left him. His life changes as he meets his former classmate Dima, now a successful businessman. The young man becomes involved in the murder of the killer. This ill-considered step leads to a series of strange coincidences, which eventually lead the hero to two completely different women - a young harlot and a single widow, whose husband died because of Anatolii.

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Russian sociologist Maxim Shugaley and his translator colleague Samer Sueifan are still being held in a Libyan prison. For more than a year, they have been subjected to torture and psychological violence on a daily basis. While in custody, Maxim Shugaley encounters various people who turn out to be, sometimes unknowingly, sources of information about the situation in Tripoli. Listening to their stories, the sociologist literally collects valuable information bit by bit, which can be decisive for the entire world community.

During a professional conference in Prague, two interpreters in the Hungarian booth hilariously vie for the attention of one listener.

This romantic comedy presents a story of two women, twenty-year-old Laura, an editor at a woman’s weekly, and her widowed mother, a translator-interpreter named Jana. The two of them tirelessly seek Mr. Right. Having once lived through an intense relationship with a ‘typical’ Czech man, Jana intentionally avoids Czech men. She searches for her dream foreigner while long-sufferingly warding off the tragicomic advances of her good-natured neighbor Žemla. After several unsuccessful attempts, Laura falls in love with Oliver, a forty year old who works as an ad agency idea man. Little does she suspect that twenty years ago Oliver was Jana’s true love…

In late eighties, in Ceausescu's Romania, a black market VHS bootlegger and a courageous female translator brought the magic of Western films to the Romanian people and sowed the seeds of a revolution.

Filmmaker Alan Berliner documents his first cousin, the poet-translator Edwin Honig, as he succumbs to Alzheimer's.

Brazilian director Julio Bressane directs this religious biography on the life and work of Saint Jerome, the monk who first translated the Bible into Latin. Set both in the desert and in the posh confines of the Vatican, Jerome (Everaldo Pontes) agonizes over which Latin word would best fit its Hebrew counterpart. ~ Jonathan Crow, Rovi

Set in 1985 post-war Vietnam, Khang moves to Saigon after securing a position to translate "The Little Prince." Due to his family connections, Khang's life under the new regime is secure. But everything changes when he meets Ky Nam, a reserved older widow who lives in Khang's new community.

Two newly dead young people meet in the streets of Athens, amid the pulsing cityscape and the ghosts of history. One a translator, the other a photographer, they were outsiders in life; in death they struggle with the residue of their longings and mistakes. They wander the city together, finding consolation in the difficult beauty of existence and its aftermath.