Looking for Joy

In several unrelated stories, the consequences of putting one's foot down – or failing to do so – are explored.

Over the course of ten days and 435 miles, an unbreakable bond is forged between pro adventure racer Michael Light and a scrappy street dog companion dubbed Arthur. As the team is pushed to their outer limits of endurance in the race, Arthur redefines what victory, loyalty and friendship truly mean.

A boy, obsessed with comparing himself with those less fortunate, experiences a different life at the home of his aunt and uncle in 1959 Sweden.

A shut-in´s routine is disrupted by the visit of his older brother. The disruption leads to joy in the end.

In the Swedish city of Lethe, people from different walks of life take part in a series of short, deadpan vignettes that rush past. Some are just seconds long, none longer than a couple of minutes. A young woman remembers a fantasy honeymoon with a rock guitarist. A man awakes from a dream about bomber planes. A businessman boasts about success while being robbed by a pickpocket, and so on. The absurdist collection is accompanied by Dixieland jazz and similar music.

A young Greek woman falls in love with a non-Greek and struggles to get her family to accept him while she comes to terms with her heritage and cultural identity.

In 1896, three survivors of a whaling ship-wreck in the Canadian Arctic are saved and adopted by an Eskimo tribe but frictions arise when the three start misbehaving.

As children in the loving Ekdahl family, Fanny and Alexander enjoy a happy life with their parents, who run a theater company. After their father dies unexpectedly, however, the siblings end up in a joyless home when their mother, Emilie, marries a stern bishop. The bleak situation gradually grows worse as the bishop becomes more controlling, but dedicated relatives make a valiant attempt to aid Emilie, Fanny and Alexander.

Tobias is the new, idealistic priest in a suburb but he soon learns that his flock is quite uninterested in Christianity. However, he befriends Carolina, a chain smoking woman his age, wheelchair-bound since birth. It is opposites attract although their backgrounds are different.

A Japanese Yakuza gangster's deadly existence in his homeland gets him exiled to Los Angeles, where he is taken in by his little brother and his brother's gang.

Wounded Civil War soldier John Dunbar tries to commit suicide—and becomes a hero instead. As a reward, he's assigned to his dream post, a remote junction on the Western frontier, and soon makes unlikely friends with the local Sioux tribe.

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 a one night stand with Alex, Isabel realizes that she is pregnant and they decide to get married. However, along with the marriage comes compromise of one's own cultural traditions.

Salvatore "Sal" Fragione is the Italian owner of a pizzeria in Brooklyn. A neighborhood local, Buggin' Out, becomes upset when he sees that the pizzeria's Wall of Fame exhibits only Italian actors. Buggin' Out believes a pizzeria in a black neighborhood should showcase black actors, but Sal disagrees. The wall becomes a symbol of racism and hate to Buggin' Out and to other people in the neighborhood, and tensions rise.

Years of working in the food industry have made Juana, a working-class Latina, a chef of speed and skill. Searching for financial stability, she stumbles into a high-energy, male-dominated Japanese cuisine kitchen. The new atmosphere re-ignites her passions for food and life and makes her hungry to get mixed up in the flavors of this new world.

A desperate socialite seeks her missing husband, troubled by bad investments and debts, with help from a private eye and the high-priced call girl hubby had been seeing.

Mia returns from Stockholm to her parents' home in a small town in Dalecarlia (Dalarna) to celebrate her father's 70th birthday. Her elder sisters Eivor and Gunilla welcome her, but their different lifestyles prevent them from really communicating. The tension builds, and the party that should be a celebration turns out to be a turning point for the family and their friends

Two teenage girls in small-town Sweden. Elin is beautiful, popular, and bored with life. Agnes is friendless, sad, and secretly in love with Elin.

Lilya Michailova lives in poverty, dreaming of a better life. Her mother moves to the United States and abandons her to her neglectful aunt. Desperate for money, Lilya starts working as a prostitute, and meets Andrei, who offers her a good job in Sweden. However, upon arrival, her life quickly enters a downward spiral.

An American girl, Daphne, heads to Europe in search of the father she's never met. But instead of finding a British version of her bohemian mother, she learns the love of her mom's life is an uptight politician. The only problem now is that her long-lost dad is engaged to a fiercely territorial social climber with a daughter who makes Daphne's life miserable.