Howard Weistling dreamed of becoming a great comic strip artist, but he felt compelled to enlist in the Army Air Corps during WWII. He eventually created a comic while a prisoner of war in Germany.

"The Dalai Lama's reincarnation is a civilizational struggle between China and Tibetans over who controls Tibetan Buddhism," says Amitabh Mathur, a former Indian government adviser on Tibetan affairs.

The meeting of Aztec Emperor Montezuma II and Hernán Cortés and the events that followed weigh heavily in Mexico half a millennium later.

Two deeply personal films from Cameroonian Rosine Mbakam won critical acclaim in the U.S. by grappling with how families maintain traditions in a time of global migration and generational change.