Christina Ricci in The Man Who Cried (2000)

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History is written in broad strokes, but for every grand episode in the drama of kingdoms and epochs there are countless stories of upheaval, striving, triumph, and catastrophe effecting individual lives. In director Sally Potter’s epic, lush, and deeply personal The Man Who Cried (2000), a Russian freeman desires nothing but a chance to work for a better life, to devote himself to securing a future for his wife and daughter that will be more forgiving than the turmoil that has formed him. Sharing a dream with untold millions, he sets sail for America, intending to bring his loved ones along. But political vagaries dictate that his daughter be brought up in Britain by a family not his own. They raise an artistic prodigy, a singer and dancer who gains a footing on the Parisian stage. Perhaps she would be happy in the bohemian life, but the Nazis are marching in. The drums of war will send her on a journey of discovery, the larger canvas of world events forcing her to paint in the missing figures of her disbanded family.