PATHS OF THE SOUL follows a group of Tibetan villagers who leave their families and homes to make a “bowing pilgrimage” — laying their bodies flat on the ground after every few steps — along the 2,000-kilometre road to Lhasa. Though equally devoted to the trip, they all have different reasons: one traveller needs to cleanse bad family karma; another, a butcher, wants to wash the animals’ bloodstains from his soul; and another pilgrim, sensing the end is near, hopes that prayers and prostrations will break the chain of cause and effect determined by his life’s actions. During their months on the road, a baby is born, they meet fellow travellers, and their resolve is put to the test by harsh snowstorms and physical fatigue. But no hardship can deter them from their ultimate goal — not even the threat of death, a very real danger in this high altitude where a common cold can take one’s life.

The story of legendary blues performer, Bessie Smith, who rose to fame during the 1920s and ’30s.

This is how the US Marine Corps turns raw recruits into certified members of world’s most lethal fighting machine.

Andrés and his son Pedro live in a working district of Caracas and hardly ever see each other. While Andrés fills his time doing different jobs, Pedro wanders the streets playing with friends and learning from the violent atmosphere around him.

A sophisticated con man mounts an intricate plan to rob an airport bank while the Soviet premier is due to arrive.

In 1951 New York poet Elizabeth Bishop travels to Rio de Janeiro to visit Mary, a college friend. The shy Elizabeth is overwhelmed by Brazilian sensuality. She is the antithesis to Mary’s dashing partner, architect Lota de Macedo Soares. Although frosty at first, the architect soon makes a play for Elizabeth and the poet finally succumbs to Lota’s advances. Mary is jealous, but unconventional Lota is determined to have both women at all costs. Their ménage à trois is thrown off balance when Lota starts work on her biggest project to date, designing Parque do Flamengo in Rio. Elizabeth accepts an academic teaching post in the USA and the women drift apart. Lota, at all other times brimming with self-confidence, is inconsolable. This eternal triangle plays out against the backdrop of the military coup of 1964. Bishop’s moving poems are at the core of a film which lushly illustrates a crucial phase in the life of this influential Pulitzer prize-winning poet

70-year-old widower Ben Whittaker has discovered that retirement isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Seizing an opportunity to get back in the game, he becomes a senior intern at an online fashion site, founded and run by Jules Ostin.

A one-hour TV movie on BBC TWO about Frank Gardner’s story about being an investigative journalist who, while reporting, was captured by al-Qaida gunmen, shot six times and left for dead. He survived, but was paralyzed from the waist down.

A tender drama unfolds between a grieving father and a troubled teenage girl as they drive northbound along the quiet outback roads of Australia. What she doesn’t know is that between stops, he is leaving behind a bloody trail of bodies in a revenge motivated killing spree.

Hopeless romantic Gertrud inhabits a turn-of-the-century milieu of artists and musicians, where she pursues an idealized notion of love that will always elude her. She abandons her distinguished husband and embraces an affair with a young concert pianist, who falls short of her desire for lasting affection. When an old lover returns to her life, fresh disappointments follow, and Gertrud must try to come to terms with reality.

Liberated ’70s couple seduce another couple into experimentation with bisexuality and group-sex.

The passionate Merchant-Ivory drama tells the story of Francoise Gilot, the only lover of Pablo Picasso who was strong enough to withstand his ferocious cruelty and move on with her life.