The Day of the Siege: September Eleven 1683

Nathan Algren is an American hired to instruct the Japanese army in the ways of modern warfare, which finds him learning to respect the samurai and the honorable principles that rule them. Pressed to destroy the samurai's way of life in the name of modernization and open trade, Algren decides to become an ultimate warrior himself and to fight for their right to exist.

Krotoa, a feisty, bright, 11-year-old girl is removed from her close-knit Khoi tribe to serve Jan van Riebeeck, her uncle’s trading partner and the first Governor of the Cape Colony. She is brought into the first Fort established by the Dutch East India Company in 1652. There she grows into a visionary young woman who assimilates the Dutch language and culture so well that she rises to become an influential translator but ends up being rejected by her own people as she tries to bridge the gap between the two cultures about to collide.

Captain Etienne Navarre is a man on whose shoulders lies a cruel curse. Punished for loving each other, Navarre must become a wolf by night whilst his lover, Lady Isabeau, takes the form of a hawk by day. Together, with the thief Philippe Gaston, they must try to overthrow the corrupt Bishop and in doing so break the spell.

The background to and depiction of a watershed battle in Japanese history, at Sekigahara in 1600, when Tokugawa Ieyasu's Army of the East defeated the Army of the West of Ishida Mitsunari. The story includes the intrigues and shifting loyalties of the various retainers, family members, and samurai.

Inspired by true events, this is a film about a childhood friendship, torn apart by the horrific Hamidian massacres infiltrated by the Ottoman Empire under the rule of Sultan Abdul Hamid II (1894-1896).