Le 21 août 1831, dans le comté de Southampton, en Virginie, l'Afro-américain Nat Turner mène une révolte de Noirs, aussi bien libres qu'esclaves. Soixante Blancs et encore plus de Noirs meurent lors de la révolte.
After surviving the 1863 Battle of Corinth during the Civil War, Newton Knight, a poor farmer from Mississippi, leads a group of anti-slavery Confederate deserters in Jones County and turns them against the Confederacy. Knight subsequently marries former slave, Rachel, effectively establishing the region's first mixed-race community, even though Native Americans and Europeans (such as the Mississippi Choctaws) have been doing it long before in their ancient homeland.
Harsha Vardhan is the sole heir of his father Ravikanth's business empire worth 250 billion. He takes up a course on rural development after he meets Charusheela at his friend Apparao's birthday party. She wants to use technology for the benefit of Devarakota, a remote village in Uttarandhra where she hails from. Friendship blossoms between them and they become attracted to each other in the course of time.
En Valachie au début du dix-neuvième siècle, Costandin, un policier local, est embauché par le boyard Iordache, pour retrouver Carfin, son esclave tzigane qui a fui après avoir eu une liaison avec sa femme, Sultana.
In the 1960s Dashrath Manjhi (Nawazuddin Siddiqui) lived in a small village Gehlaur near Gaya, Bihar, India with his family including his wife Phaguniya Devi (Radhika Apte). There was a rocky mountain near his village that people either had to climb across or travel round to gain access to medical care at the nearest town Wazirganj. One day Manjhi's wife fell while trying to cross the mountain, after which Manjhi decided to carve a road through it. When he started hammering the hill people called him a lunatic but that only steeled his resolve further. After 22 years of back-breaking labour, Manjhi carved a path 360 feet long, 25 feet deep in places and 30 feet wide.
Le film relate l'histoire d'Iqbal, jeune garçon pakistanais réduit en esclavage et contraint de travailler, comme de nombreux autres enfants, dans une fabrique de tapis. Mais Iqbal n'est pas comme les autres : il utilise un point qu'il est le seul à savoir faire. Sera-t-il capable de retrouver sa liberté ?
In 1300 BC, Moses, a general and member of the royal family, prepares to attack the Hittite army with Prince Ramesses. A High Priestess of Sekhmet (the war goddess) divines a prophecy from animal intestines, which she relates to Ramesses' father, Seti I. He tells the two men of the prophecy, in which one (of Moses and Ramesses) will save the other and become a leader. During the attack on the Hittites, Moses saves Ramesses' life, leaving both men troubled. Later, Moses is sent to the city of Pithom to meet with the Viceroy Hegep, who oversees the Hebrew slaves. Upon his arrival, he encounters the slave Joshua, who is the descendant of Joseph, and Moses is appalled by the horrific conditions of the slaves. Shortly afterwards, Moses meets Nun, who informs him of his true lineage; he is the child of Hebrew parents who was sent by his sister Miriam to be raised by Pharaoh's daughter. Moses is stunned at the revelation and leaves angrily. However, two Hebrews also overhear Nun's story and report their discovery to Hegep.
Selon l'ONU, plus de 200 000 Cambodgiens ont été vendus comme esclaves dans plusieurs pays d'Asie du Sud-Est, tels que la Thaïlande ou la Malaisie. Aya est l'une d'entre eux. Horrifiant, son parcours constitue le fil rouge du documentaire. Jeune paysanne, elle a été réduite en esclavage à 16 ans après avoir été vendue à une agence malaisienne pour être femme de ménage. Pendant deux ans, elle a connu l'enfer. Battue, exploitée, privée de passeport par son patron, la jeune fille s'est enfuie mais, peu après, elle a été violée et séquestrée durant de longues semaines avant d'être libérée puis emprisonnée car sans papiers. Aya est parvenue à s'extirper de ce cauchemar et à rentrer chez elle, avec un jeune enfant né de son viol, ce qui lui vaut d'être méprisée par sa mère et les gens de son village.
In 1841, Solomon Northup is a free African-American man working as a violinist, who lives with his wife, Anne Hampton, and two children, Margaret and Alonzo, in Saratoga Springs, New York. Two men, Brown and Hamilton, offer him a two-week job as a musician if he will travel to Washington, D.C., with them. Once there, they drug Northup and deliver him to a slave pen owned by James Burch.
Dido Elizabeth Belle Lindsay was born in 1761, the natural daughter of Maria Belle, an enslaved African woman in the West Indies, and Captain Sir John Lindsay, a British Royal Navy officer. After the death of Dido's mother, Captain Lindsay takes Dido from the slums of the West Indies in 1765 and entrusts her to his uncle William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield, the Lord Chief Justice, and his wife, Elizabeth, who live at Kenwood House, an estate in Hampstead outside London. Lord and Lady Mansfield raise Dido as a free gentlewoman, together with their niece Lady Elizabeth Murray, who came to live with them after her mother died and her father remarried. When the two cousins reach adulthood, the Mansfields commission an oil portrait of their two great-nieces, but Dido is unhappy about sitting for it as she is worried that it will portray her as a subordinate, like other portraits she has seen depicting aristocrats with black servants. Dido's father dies and leaves her the generous sum of £2,000 a year, enough to make her an heiress. Lady Elizabeth, by contrast, will have no income from her father, whose son from his new wife has been named his sole heir. Arrangements are made for Elizabeth to have her coming out to society, but Lord and Lady Mansfield believe no gentleman will agree to marry Dido because of her mixed-race status, so while she will travel to London with her cousin, she will not be "out" to society.
Ce film a pour titre un slogan qui a fait le tour de la Grèce en crise depuis 2010 et qui commence à voyager au-delà : « Ne vivons plus comme des esclaves », qui se prononce « Na min zisoumé san douli » en grec. Un slogan qu'on peut lire en Grèce sur les murs des villes et sur les rochers des campagnes, sur les panneaux publicitaires vides ou détournés, dans les journaux alternatifs et qu'on peut entendre sur certaines stations de radio et dans les lieux d’autogestion qui se multiplient. Un slogan diffusé jour après jour, et que les intervenants grecs du film invitent les spectateurs à reprendre en chœur, sur les mélodies du film réalisé en coopération avec eux.