The year is 1927. A little Jewish girl (Fegele) lives happily with her father, a cantor, and her grandmother in a Russian village. But with the ever-present threat of persecution, her father leaves for America to find work and then send for his family. Soon after he leaves, violence engulfs the village. Fegele is bundled off with some fleeing villagers who hope to get to America, but she ends up on a boat to England.

Fegele is re-named Suzie, sent to a Christian foster home and to a school where she is forbidden to speak Yiddish but learns to sing. Ten years later she leaves England for Paris, where she becomes a chorus girl and befriends an ambitious blonde Russian dancer, Lola. She starts to save, hoping to earn enough money to pay for her passage to America. Together Lola and Suzie find jobs in the new opera company of impresario Felix Perlman; their lives become inextricably entwined with the fate of an arrogant Italian opera singer and a gypsy horse-handler as the Nazis move in on Paris and Suzie's quest to find her father becomes also a quest to embrace her own identity.

The Man Who Cried is the first film in Europe to be finished using the technique of high-definition digital grading throughout.

2000

R (MPAA) : Rated R for sexuality

Director .......................  Sally Potter
Starring .......................  Christina Ricci,
                                     Johnny Depp,
                                     John Turturro,
                                     Cate Blanchett,
                                     Harry Dean Stanton,
                                     Oleg Yankovsky,
                                     Miriam Karlin
Composer .....................  Osvaldo Golijov
Costume Designer ........... Lindy Hemming
Director of Photography.... Sacha Vierny
Editor ..........................  Hervé Schneid
Producer........................ Christopher Sheppard,
                                     Simona Benzakein
Screenwriter .................. Sally Potter