Two Jesuit priests, Sebastião Rodrigues and Francis Garrpe, travel to seventeenth century Japan which has, under the Tokugawa shogunate, banned Catholicism and almost all foreign contact.

There they witness the persecution of Japanese Christians at the hands of their own government which wishes to purge Japan of all western influence. Eventually the priests separate and Rodrigues travels the countryside, wondering why God remains silent while His children suffer.

Robert Pattinson and Reese Witherspoon star in this drama based on the historical novel by Sara Gruen, following the adventures of a young vet working in a travelling circus during America's Great Depression in the 1930s. After his parents are killed in a car accident, promising Ivy League student Jacob Jankowski (Pattinson) suffers an emotional breakdown and runs away before graduating, eventually finding work as a vet with the down-at-heel Benzini Brothers circus. There he meets a host of colourful characters including tyrannical animal trainer August (Christoph Waltz) and his beautiful wife Marlena (Witherspoon).