Smoke

Chance, life's mysteries and the power of stories, familiar themes in the fiction of writer Paul Auster, are forefront in Auster's first screenplay, the winner of an Independent Spirit Award. Wayne Wang directs this series of ingeniously interlocking tales, which revolve around a Brooklyn smoke shop overseen by its garrulous proprietor (Harvey Keitel). Wang and Keitel received the special Jury Prize at the 1995 Berlin International Film Festival for their work on a film praised by the "Washington Post" as a "wondrously acted group portrait."