Karen Landry

THE MEMORY THIEF is the story of Lukas - an aimless, young man in contemporary L.A. who buries thoughts of his own past in the humdrum routine of a tollbooth clerk. A chance encounter with a Holocaust survivor suddenly brings into focus a world and an identity he embraces with frightening intensity - the victimized Jews of World War II. As he begins to enthusiastically act out his newfound obsession, Lukas, a non-Jew, discovers that survivor's guilt isn't just for the Jews anymore. THE MEMORY THIEF, starring Mark Webber, is a mesmerizing, audacious psychological thriller in the tradition of TAXI DRIVER.

Inge (Elizabeth Reaser) is a feisty German mail-order bride who has come to Minnesota to marry Olaf (Tim Guinee), a young Norwegian immigrant farmer of few words. But in a post-WWI, anti-German climate, the local minister (John Heard) openly forbids the marriage. Inge and Olaf fall in love despite the town's disapproval. But when the town banker (Ned Beatty) attempts to foreclose on the farm of his friend Frandsen (Alan Cumming), Olaf takes a stand...and the community unites around the young couple, finally accepting Inge as one of their own.

In this film directed by Robert Rodriguez, a young rebel himself at a fork in the road: Should he marry his girlfriend, or should he join a band? But life is apparently not complicated enough for him, and he's embroild in a face-off with a rogue cop.

Set in 1920, Inge travels from Germany to rural Minnesota meet the man destined to be her husband. Bureaucracy and social morality cause major complications.