Beniamin Pop

In the grips of the Hundred Years War against England, the French find themselves in a difficult situation: Paris has fallen, Orléans is besieged, and their king, Charles VII, appears more interested in his affairs of the heart than those of the state. In this hopeless situation, the farmer's daughter Joan announces that God has commissioned her to liberate Orléans. The ‘Maid of Orléans’ may be victorious in battle but loses her heart in passion to a Burgundian knight, Lionel. The flames consume a woman torn between love and her divine mission.

Katerina Ismailova is wealthily married and lonely, her husband impotent and her father-in-law a tyrant. She is trapped in a world where merciless brutality, despotism and cruelty reign. The woman with a lust for life and love gives way to her raw longing for freedom when a new labourer Sergei starts working for the Ismailov family. She throws herself into a passionate affair with him and poisons her father-in-law's food. But the increasing radicalism of her desire for self-determination will claim further victims...