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.
Robert Neville is a scientist who was unable to stop the spread of the terrible virus that was incurable and man-made. Immune, Neville is now the last human survivor in what is left of New York City and perhaps the world. For three years, Neville has faithfully sent out daily radio messages, desperate to find any other survivors who might be out there. But he is not alone.
A family of immigrants is chased through the woods by border patrol. But they're not alone.
In early 20th century New York City, an impoverished socialite desperately seeks a suitable husband as she gradually finds herself betrayed by her friends and exiled from high society.
Black Cake follows an Indo-Caribbean woman in Queens who's stuck in a routined life after the death of her mother. She's presented with an opportunity that could change her life, but it requires her to step away from her comfort zone to sell her mother's home.
Eva is beautiful, irresponsible, self-absorbed and emotionally disconnected. Her life is all about the right clothes, the right people and the right places. Her life is turned upside down when she loses her job and alienates her friends by cheating on her boyfriend. She soon finds herself among "common" people where she makes a surprising new acquaintance.
Left to her own devices during an August heatwave, a seven-year-old wild child and her companion have an adventure filled with squirt guns, cicadas and rain dances.
In an industrializing Italian town, a married woman, rendered mentally unstable after a traffic accident, drifts into an affair with a friend of her husband.
Elisabeth leaves her abusive and drunken husband Rolf, and goes to live with her brother, Göran. The year is 1975 and Göran lives in a commune called Together. Living in this leftist commune Elisabeth learns that the world can be viewed from different perspectives.
Depressed Alain Leroy leaves the clinic where he was detoxified. He meets friends, acquaintances and women, trying to find a reason to continue living.
Juvenal is a metro driver from Belo Horizonte. Margô, a station controller. Both live in a state of complete solitude – each in a particular way. Juvenal refuses to be alone and strolls through the streets of this metropolis taking comfort by mingling with the anonimous crowd. Margo seeks relief in the virtual world of social networks where she struggles to establish long lasting relations with real persons.
Genc gets into existential crisis, loses his will and purpose for his life, as he thinks that he is the cause of his roommate's death. As an escape from this reality, he uses the virtual (reality) world.
Robinson Crusoe flees Britain on a ship after killing his friend over the love of Mary. A fierce ocean storm wrecks his ship and leaves him stranded by himself on an uncharted island. Left to fend for himself, Crusoe seeks out a tentative survival on the island, until he meets Friday, a tribesman whom he saves from being sacrificed. Initially, Crusoe is thrilled to finally have a friend, but he has to defend himself against the tribe who uses the island to sacrifice tribesman to their gods. During time their relationship changes from master-slave to a mutual respected friendship despite their difference in culture and religion.
Every night while the city sleeps, Ahmad, a former Pakistani rock star turned immigrant, drags his heavy cart along the streets of New York. And every morning, he sells coffee and donuts to a city he cannot call his own. One day, however, the pattern of this harsh existence is broken by a glimmer of hope for a better life.
A recently-widowed science fiction writer considers whether to adopt a hyper-imaginative 6-year-old abandoned and socially-rejected boy who says he's really from Mars.
The unusual friendship between a German embassy employee and a twelve-year-old refugee girl helps both of them rediscover their joy in life, but also brings with it suspicion, corruption and violence.
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.
Jaira, Chelsea, and Alecz catch up with their friend, Sujee, who lives in Busan, Korea. Sujee is lonely and seeks people who understand her struggles as a diaspora but her friends have a different image of her life there.
After the death of her father, Little Voice or LV becomes a virtual recluse, never going out and hardly ever saying a word. She just sits in her bedroom listening to her father's collection of old records of Shirley Bassey, Marilyn Monroe and various other famous female singers. But at night time, LV sings, imitating these great singers with surprising accuracy. One night she is overheard by one of her mother's boyfriends, who happens to be a talent agent. He manages to convince her that her talent is special and arranges for her to perform at the local night club, but several problems arise.
Matia, a marginal young man, escapes to an island in the River Paraná. In an uncomfortable atmosphere that is not his own, he tries to start a new life, but the tensions his arrival cause take him back to his criminal past and to the idea of having to flee in order to survive.