"Based on the 2009 investigative book by BBC correspondent Martin Sixsmith, The Lost Child of Philomena Lee, PHILOMENA focuses on the efforts of Philomena Lee (Dench), mother to a boy conceived out of wedlock--something her Irish-Catholic community didn't have the highest opinion of--and given away for adoption in the United States. In following church doctrine, she was forced to sign a contract that wouldn't allow for any sort of inquiry into the...

The product of a forbidden love affair between a wealthy landowner and a humble fisherman, Juan de Dios is taken away and abandoned by his mother's sister to an orphanage at birth. Reunited with his father as an adult, he swears an oath of revenge on his father's deathbed and changes his name to Juan de Diablo. When he returns to Mexico to fulfill his oath, he is torn between twin sisters, the passionate Aimee and the virtuous Regina who turn out...

Raul Ruiz's masterful adaptation of the eponymous nineteenth-century Portuguese novel. The core story centers on Joao, the bastard child of an ill-fated romance between two members of the aristocracy who are forbidden to marry, and his quest to discover the truth of his parentage. But this is just the start of an engrossing tale that follows a multitude of characters whose fates conjoin, separate and then rejoin again over three decades in Portugal,...