Selma, a Czechoslovakian immigrant, is a single mother working in a factory in rural America circa 1964. She is also afflicted by a hereditary disease, which will cost her her sight. Determined to protect her 10-year-old son from the same fate, Selma is saving her money to get him an operation. In the evenings, Selma escapes by rehearsing for a production of The Sound of Music with her best friend. When a neighbor betrays her trust, Selma's life spirals...

A young man longs to follow in his father's footsteps and become one of the king's personal guards, a musketeer.

A love triangle set in the days just before the communist uprising in Indochina. A plantation owner finds that her adopted daughter has fallen in love with the owner's secret lover.

In 1964 Paris, Madeleine works as a shoe salesgirl and a part-time prostitute. She falls in love with Jaromil, a Czech doctor she picks up, and the two continue to see each other for years despite Madeleine's marriage to another man. Meanwhile, Madeleine's daughter Vera has romantic trouble of her own: she is torn between her longtime boyfriend and an unobtainable American musician.

In 1970s Iran, Marjane "Marji" Statrapi watches events through her young eyes and her idealistic family. Their long dream is realized when the hated Shah is defeated in the Iranian Revolution of 1979. Now ruled by Islamic fundamentalists, Marji grows up to witness first hand how the new Iran has become a repressive tyranny on its own. With Marji dangerously refusing to remain silent at this injustice, her parents send her abroad to Vienna to study....