After the death of a 19-year-old girl named Emily Rose, the cause of which was self-inflicted wounds and malnutrition, a priest named Richard Moore is charged with negligent homicide. The archdiocese wishes for Father Moore to plead guilty, so that the incident can be covered up. A lawyer named Erin Bruner is hired to help Father Moore negotiate a plea deal, but Father Moore insists on pleading innocent. At the trial, the prosecutor Ethan Thomas asks for the expert opinion of two doctors, who agree that Ms Rose was possessed by an invisible creature. A few days later, she suffered from a seizure and was admitted to the hospital, during which the demons attacked again and infested her.
Munich begins with a depiction of the events of the 1972 Munich Olympics and then cuts to the home of Prime Minister of Israel Golda Meir, where Avner Kaufman (Eric Bana), a Mossad agent of German-Jewish descent, is chosen to lead an assassination mission against 11 Palestinians allegedly involved in the massacre. To give the Israeli government plausible deniability and at the direction of his handler Ephraim (Geoffrey Rush), Avner resigns from Mossad and operates with no official ties to Israel. His team includes four Jewish volunteers from around the world: South African driver Steve (Daniel Craig), Belgian toy-maker and explosives expert Robert (Mathieu Kassovitz), former Israeli soldier and "cleaner" Carl (Ciarán Hinds), and a Danish document forger named Hans (Hanns Zischler). They are given information by a shadowy French informant, Louis (Mathieu Amalric).
Pharaoh Rameses I of Egypt has ordered the death of all firstborn Hebrew males after hearing the prophecy of the Deliverer, but a Hebrew woman named Yoshebel saves her infant son by setting him adrift in a basket on the Nile. Bithiah, the Pharaoh's daughter, who had recently lost her husband and the hope of ever having children of her own, finds the basket and decides to adopt the boy even though her servant, Memnet, recognizes the child is Hebrew and protests.
In September 1939, Władysław Szpilman (Adrien Brody), a Polish-Jewish pianist, is playing live on the radio in Warsaw when the station is bombed during Nazi Germany's invasion of Poland which caused the outbreak of World War II. Hoping for a quick victory, Szpilman celebrates with his posh family at home when learning that Britain and France have declared war on Germany. German troops soon enter Warsaw and the Nazi authorities implement measures to identify, isolate, financially ruin and reduce the Jewish population in Warsaw. Jews are ordered to provide their own identifying armbands with the Star of David.
Berlin in 1995. Michael Berg watches an U-Bahn pass by—then flashing back to a tram in 1958 Neustadt. A 15-year-old Michael (David Kross) gets off because he feels sick and wanders the streets, pausing in the entryway of a nearby apartment building where he vomits. Hanna Schmitz (Kate Winslet), a tram conductor, comes in and helps him return home.
When a massive tectonic shift triggers a tsunami capable of swallowing whole continents, the military creates an ark capable of holding only 50,000 people and the DNA of every species possible while the storm consumes most of the world.
A nobleman Judah Ben-Hur (Jack Huston) is falsely accused of an assassination attempt by his boyhood friend Messala (Toby Kebbell). He survives years of slavery under the Romans and attempts to get revenge.
In a New York City park, hippies have gathered with guitars to sing protest songs. Fritz and his buddies show up in an attempt to meet girls. When a trio of attractive females walk by, Fritz and his friends exhaust themselves trying to get their attention, but find that the girls are more interested in the crow standing a few feet away. The girls attempt to flirt with the crow, making unintentionally condescending remarks about blacks, while Fritz looks on in annoyance. Suddenly, the crow rebukes the girls with a snide remark and walks away. Fritz invites the girls to "seek the truth," bringing them up to his friend's apartment, where a wild party is taking place. Since the other rooms are crowded, Fritz drags the girls into the bathroom and the four of them have group sex in the bathtub. Meanwhile, the police (portrayed as pigs) arrive to raid the party. As the two officers walk up the stairs, one of the partygoers finds Fritz and the girls in the bath tub. Several others jump in, pushing Fritz to the side where he takes solace in marijuana. The two officers break into the apartment, but find that it is empty because everyone has moved into the bathroom. Fritz takes refuge in the toilet when one of the pigs enters the bathroom and begins to beat up the partygoers. As the pig becomes exhausted, a very stoned Fritz jumps out, grabs the pig's gun, and shoots the toilet, causing the water main to break and flooding everybody out of the apartment. The pigs chase Fritz down the street into a synagogue. Fritz manages to escape when the congregation gets up to celebrate the United States' decision to send more weapons into Israel.
A newly separated couple Clyde (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) and Stephanie Brenek (Kyra Sedgwick) live in different homes. After Clyde picks up their two children, Emily "Em" (Natasha Calis) and Hannah (Madison Davenport), for the weekend, they stop at a yard sale where Em becomes intrigued by an old wooden box that has Hebrew letters engraved on it. Clyde buys the box for Em, and they later find that there seems no way to open it. That night, Em hears whispering coming from the box. She is able to open it, and finds a tooth, a dead moth, a wooden figurine, and a ring, which she begins to wear. Em becomes solitary, and her behavior becomes increasingly sinister; she stabs her father in the hand with a fork. The house becomes infested with moths.
In 1905, Tevye, a poor Jewish milkman living in the Russian village of Anatevka, explains to the audience what keeps the Jews of Anatevka going is the balance they achieve through following their ancient traditions, comparing their precarious circumstance to a fiddler on a roof: trying to scratch out a pleasant tune, while not breaking their necks. The fiddler appears throughout the film as a metaphoric reminder of the Jews' ever-present fears and danger, and also as a symbol of the traditions Tevye is trying to hold on to as his world changes around him. While in town, Tevye meets Perchik, a radical Marxist from Kiev. Tevye invites Perchik to stay with him and his family, and as a deal, offers him food, in exchange for Perchik tutoring his daughters.
In April 1938, a voice representing Death (Roger Allam) tells about how the young Liesel Meminger (Sophie Nélisse) has piqued his interest. Liesel is traveling on a train with her mother (Heike Makatsch) and younger brother when her brother dies. At his burial she picks up a book that has been dropped by his graveside (a gravedigger's manual). Liesel is then delivered to foster parents Hans (Geoffrey Rush) and Rosa (Emily Watson) Hubermann because her mother, a Communist, is fleeing Germany. When she arrives, Liesel makes an impression on a neighboring boy, Rudy Steiner (Nico Liersch).
Casey Beldon has nightmarish hallucinations of strange-looking dogs in the neighbourhood and an evil child with bright blue eyes following her around. While babysitting Matty, her neighbor's son, she finds him showing his infant sibling its reflection in a mirror. Matty attacks Casey, smashing the mirror on her head, and tells her: "Jumby wants to be born now". She puts him to bed and leaves in shock.
A former world-famous conductor of the Bolshoi Theatre orchestra, known as "The Maestro," Andrey Simonovich Filipov, had had his career publicly broken by Leonid Brezhnev for defending Jewish musicians and is reduced to working as a mere janitor in the theatre where he once conducted, becoming an alcoholic in the process.
Katherine Winter (Hilary Swank) and colleague, Ben (Idris Elba), investigate and disprove claims of miracles. In Louisiana, Katherine receives a call from a friend, Father Michael Costigan (Stephen Rea), who says that his photographs of her have developed burn marks that when assembled, form a sickle-like symbol, a possible warning from God, which she ignores. She meets Doug Blackwell (David Morrissey), a teacher from the nearby town of Haven, who asks Katherine to find out why Haven's river has turned red. The locals believe this is a biblical plague caused by a girl, Loren McConnell (AnnaSophia Robb), who they believe killed her older brother in the river. They travel to Haven where Katherine meets Loren and has a vision of her turning the river red. Meanwhile, Ben witnesses dead frogs seemingly fall from the sky. Doug invites them to spend the night at his house, since the town doesn't have a motel. That night as they're about to eat dinner, they encounter flies and disease, which kills off local cows. Later that evening, Katherine explains to Doug at his wife's grave why she left the church; five years ago, she was an ordained minister. After a drought while doing missionary work in the Sudan with her husband and daughter, the locals sacrificed her family, believing they were the cause.
In a series of flashbacks throughout the film, Maria Altmann recalls the arrival of Nazi forces in Vienna, Austria, and the subsequent suppression of the Jewish community and the looting and pillaging conducted by the Nazis against Jewish families. Seeking to escape before the country is completely shut off, Maria Altmann and members of her family attempt to flee to the United States. While Altmann and her husband are successful in their escape, she is forced to abandon her parents in Vienna.