In 1973, a precocious 15-year-old aspiring rock journalist lands a dream assignment from Rolling Stone to tour with a rising rock band, embarking on a coming-of-age journey as he discovers the exhilarating and heartbreaking realities behind rock stardom.
A novelist's longstanding marriage is suddenly upended when she overhears her husband giving his honest reaction to her latest book.
An aging Southern Belle complicates life for her ambitious son and crippled daughter because of her own warped views of what life should be.
25-year-old Arghavan lives with her parents in Tehran, and intends to marry her fiancé, Hesam. One day, her short stories win her a grant to attend a writing workshop in Germany. Soon before she is to leave, however, Arghavan is abducted and raped. In a strict, conservative society where young women are expected to be virgins before marriage, this is a social catastrophe. Plagued by gossip and finding little solace, Arghavan's life begins turning into a nightmare.
Lucas, a writer without ideas, receives an unexpected visit from his neighbors.
Max is a 25-year-old freelance writer and aspiring novelist who seems well on his way to success in London’s cultural spheres. Yet by night, he finds a different kind of exhilaration as a sex worker with the pseudonym Sebastian, meeting men via an escorting platform. Max uses his experiences as Sebastian to fuel his stories and the worthy debut novel that he has been longing to write, finally seems within reach.
Across a single day in Lagos, Nigeria, Clarissa prepares to host a high society party at her home, as her complicated past begins to consume her, in the form of now-distant friends and loves from her youth. Simultaneously, Septimus, a young soldier, is haunted by his own memories of the horrors he has witnessed and endured. As the perspectives traverse past and present, across the bourgeois class and those too easily forgotten by society, a delicate portrait of contemporary Nigeria emerges.
In 1936, aspiring writer Anders, along with his friend Sixten, is desperate to escape his working-class upbringing. Anders' father is an unemployed alcoholic and his mother slaves away at a laundry to support the family. A ray of hope comes Anders' way when he finishes his first novel and submits it to a publisher. But after his girlfriend gets pregnant, his future dims before his eyes once more.
While fixing up their summer cottage, Michel and his family run into a man who claims to have gone to high school with Michel.
Four sisters come of age in America in the aftermath of the Civil War.
When a young stage hopeful is found dead, suspicion falls on her mentor, a successful Broadway producer.
A reunion weekend spirals out of control for four college friends when the host - a science fiction writer on the verge of newfound success - fights to maintain his sense of reality in the face of sudden, uncanny dangers.
Samuela despairs of her lack of breakthrough as an author. When she is abandoned by her boyfriend, she secretly travels with her brother to the family holiday home in Lanzarote, where she wants to work on her novel. But instead of the peace she hoped for, she finds her father there, who occupies the house after the divorce. When her mother also shows up, the chaos is perfect.
Konoha Inoue and Tōko Amano, the Literary Girl, as she calls herself, are the sole members of their high school literature club. Their lives will be altered when Konoha's past, forgotten for a long time, reaches the present, involving them in a whirlwind of feelings where love, jealousy, revenge, remorse and forgiveness struggle to prevail.
In 1960s New York, Walter Stackhouse is a rich, successful architect and unhappily married to the beautiful but damaged Clara. His desire to be free of her feeds his obsession with Kimmel, a man suspected of brutally murdering his own wife. When Walter and Kimmel's lives become dangerously intertwined, a ruthless police detective becomes convinced he has found the murderer. But as the lines blur between innocence and intent, who, in fact, is the real killer?
A comedian finds new meaning in his life when his best friend asks him to be her sperm donor, and he meets a girl who connects with the cosmos.
Upon graduating college, a brokenhearted aspiring writer, without a dime or connections, packs his bags and heads to Los Angeles in the hopes of finding a new beginning. He quickly gets immersed into two very different worlds - one young, provocative and alluring, the other rooted in diversity, community and loyalty - both with their own unique appeals, advantages and dangers. Through his new experiences, he realizes who he is and where he belongs.
A world-renowed 70-year-old author Ezra meets a young editorial assistant Alice start up a secret relationship. After meeting in Central Park one day, their one moment of eye contact sparks a connection that leads them both down a life-changing rabbit hole, where they create a private world just for two. Ezra, famous for his audacious work, finds someone with whom he can be openly vulnerable, and Alice finds the courage to explore her own aspirations as a writer. Until it is all put at risk when their secret relationship is exposed.
Testament of Youth is a powerful story of love, war and remembrance, based on the First World War memoir by Vera Brittain, which has become the classic testimony of that war from a woman’s point of view. A searing journey from youthful hopes and dreams to the edge of despair and back again, it’s a film about young love, the futility of war and how to make sense of the darkest times.
Larry Donner, an author with a cruel ex-wife, teaches a writing workshop in which one of his students, Owen, is fed up with his domineering mother. When Owen watches a Hitchcock classic that seems to mirror his own life, he decides to put the movie's plot into action and offers to kill Larry's ex-wife, if Larry promises to murder his mom. Before Larry gets a chance to react to the plan, it seems that Owen has already set things in motion.