County Durham, England, 1984. The miners' strike has started and the police have started coming up from Bethnal Green, starting a class war with the lower classes suffering. Caught in the middle of the conflict is 11-year old Billy Elliot, who, after leaving his boxing club for the day, stumbles upon a ballet class and finds out that he's naturally talented. He practices with his teacher Mrs. Wilkinson for an upcoming audition in Newcastle-upon Tyne for the royal Ballet school in London.
In 19th-century France, doctor's wife Emma Bovary seeks to escape her dull provincial life through various extramarital affairs and extravagant spending, leading to tragic consequences.
On the invitation of her childhood best friend Patsy McCann née Willets, famed opera singer Francesca Prine - whose real name is Marie Beck - returns to Marmora, Ontario to sing in a benefit concert. Patsy and Marie were best friends from the time Marie and her family arrived in Marmora when she was ten years old to the time she left Marmora at age fifteen, which was thirty years prior. With the exception of Don Rayford on who Marie had a crush, Patsy was shy Marie's only friend in Marmora. However, Marie and Patsy have not been in touch since due to issues that drove Marie out of town at the time. Those issues include Marie being physically abused by her alcoholic mother, but most specifically what happened the evening of the Sadie Hawkins dance - where Don accompanied Marie - and post dance down by the railroad tracks. Marie and Patsy's reunion may not be able to endure the thirty years of silence and the events of that night.
For young Parisian boy Antoine Doinel, life is one difficult situation after another. Surrounded by inconsiderate adults, including his neglectful parents, Antoine spends his days with his best friend, Rene, trying to plan for a better life. When one of their schemes goes awry, Antoine ends up in trouble with the law, leading to even more conflicts with unsympathetic authority figures.
Set in a German theatre after the Second World War, two British soldiers are holding a disparate and hostile band of refugees in this theatre, prior to returning them to their homelands. The soldiers have difficulty dealing with the rivalries between Serb and Croat, resistance fighter and collaborator, Pole and Russian, etc. The threat of plague briefly unites them, but eventually even this wears off and the refugees unite in their hostility to the British.
Two lost souls visiting Tokyo -- the young, neglected wife of a photographer and a washed-up movie star shooting a TV commercial -- find an odd solace and pensive freedom to be real in each other's company, away from their lives in America.
After learning that a boy their age has been accidentally killed near their rural homes, four boys decide to go see the body. Gordie, Vern, Chris, and Teddy encounter a mean junk man and a marsh full of leeches, but they also learn more about one another and their very different home lives. Just a lark at first, the boys' adventure evolves into a defining event in their lives.
Jonas, a sales professional from Frankfurt, finds the best solution to every problem at work. In his private life, however, there is something that can still be optimized: being a father! When his daughter Laila, who is growing up with her mother Shari in Hamburg, demands more time and closeness from him, he has to readjust his life, much to the chagrin of his girlfriend Kim.
A fatally ill mother with only two months to live creates a list of things she wants to do before she dies without telling her family of her illness.
Derek Vineyard is paroled after serving 3 years in prison for killing two African-American men. Through his brother, Danny Vineyard's narration, we learn that before going to prison, Derek was a skinhead and the leader of a violent white supremacist gang that committed acts of racial crime throughout L.A. and his actions greatly influenced Danny. Reformed and fresh out of prison, Derek severs contact with the gang and becomes determined to keep Danny from going down the same violent path as he did.
A young man meets a 23-year-old cancer patient on the way to the park and disrupts her plan to commit suicide.
In order to be reinstated to the bar and recover custody of her daughter, a hotshot lawyer, now in recovery and on probation, must take on the appeal of a woman wrongfully convicted of murder.
When a car crash leaves Frannie immobilized, she is brushed off by everyone she can count on. With nowhere else to turn and desperate for help, she turns to an unlikely source, her ex Devon.
After being expelled from Beecher Prep for his treatment of a classmate with a facial deformity, Julian has struggled to fit in at his new school. To transform his life, Julian's grandmother finally reveals her own story of courage of her youth in Nazi-occupied France, where a classmate shelters her from mortal danger.
After World War II, 4,000 Polish families came to Australia. They were Jews, Fascists, anti-Communists, and others dispossessed. In a large hostel, where even married men and women were housed in separate barracks, the adults lived for two years while they worked off the government's payment of their passage. Even though he is married to Anna and has a son, Julian falls in love with Nina and she with him. As they and others face the new situations and prejudices that await immigrants and as they take on aspects of Australian culture, old-country values reassert themselves. Julian decides what to do about love and family, and Nina must find a way to move on.
One Night in Oslo follows a group of young people in Oslo’s Eastern parts on the night before Norway’s National Day, and reflects their expectations and emotions ahead of the celebration.
Lester Burnham, a depressed suburban father in a mid-life crisis, decides to turn his hectic life around after developing an infatuation with his daughter's attractive friend.
'Alan Smithee' is a film about a boy growing up. It delves into the darker side of what 'growing up' sometimes means: growing into your flaws, inevitably being met with the errors of your parents, and the necessity to make room for the pain. While Alan is surrounded by what is thought to be the American ideal, all the material comforts that should equate happiness, he learns that sometimes all we are is lost in the woods.
Set in 1965, a young couple fights to stay together as escalating violence and their opposing political backgrounds threaten to tear them apart.
After ten years abroad, Catherine returns to Luxembourg, to catch up with her daughter Alba, brought up by Catherine’s mother Elisabeth. Alba is cold and distant with this stranger showing up unexpectedly in her life, so is Elisabeth, keen to keep her protégée to herself. One day, Catherine cannot take it anymore. She kidnaps Alba and takes her on a trip to a lake up North. Begins an unsettling journey into the puzzling world of motherly love, only to find out that sometimes the true opponent is yourself.