In the poverty-stricken favelas of Rio de Janeiro in the 1970s, two young men choose different paths. Rocket is a budding photographer who documents the increasing drug-related violence of his neighborhood, while José “Zé” Pequeno is an ambitious drug dealer diving into a dangerous life of crime.
The drug-induced utopias of four Coney Island residents are shattered when their addictions run deep.
A US soldier suffers a traumatic brain injury while fighting in Afghanistan and struggles to adjust to life back home in New Orleans. When she meets local mechanic James, the pair begin to forge an unexpected bond.
A minor train accident in rural Nebraska gradually unveils a mystery involving the town's reclusive bank clerk.
Several ordinary high school students go through their daily routine as two others prepare for something more malevolent.
Jean-Dominique Bauby, editor-in-chief of French fashion bible Elle magazine, has a devastating stroke at age 43. The damage to his brain stem results in locked-in syndrome, with which he is almost completely paralyzed and only able to communicate by blinking an eye. Bauby painstakingly dictates his memoir via the only means of expression left to him.
Jacek climbs into the taxi driven by Waldemar, tells him to drive to a remote location, then brutally strangles him, seemingly without motive.
Joel Barish, heartbroken that his girlfriend underwent a procedure to erase him from her memory, decides to do the same. However, as he watches his memories of her fade away, he realises that he still loves her, and may be too late to correct his mistake.
Witek runs after a train. Three variations follow on how such a seemingly banal incident could influence the rest of Witek's life.
In Casablanca, Morocco in December 1941, a cynical American expatriate meets a former lover, with unforeseen complications.
After years of struggling with severe depression, a young man begins to open his heart, learning to love himself and others. When he becomes entangled in his therapist’s personal life, he discovers not only her need for support but also a tender, transformative connection with another man, Jackson. Through this intimate journey of trust, vulnerability, and queer romance, he confronts his past, embraces love, and finds hope in human connection.
The wife of a famous composer survives a car accident that kills her husband and daughter. Now alone, she shakes off her old identity and explores her newfound freedom but finds that she is unbreakably bound to other humans, including her husband’s mistress, whose existence she never suspected.
When reporter Jean Craddock interviews Bad Blake—an alcoholic, seen-better-days country music legend—they connect, and the hard-living crooner sees a possible saving grace in a life with Jean and her young son.
Charlie Kaufman is a confused L.A. screenwriter overwhelmed by feelings of inadequacy, sexual frustration, self-loathing, and by the screenwriting ambitions of his freeloading twin brother Donald. While struggling to adapt "The Orchid Thief," by Susan Orlean, Kaufman's life spins from pathetic to bizarre. The lives of Kaufman, Orlean's book, become strangely intertwined as each one's search for passion collides with the others'.
Extremely shy Lars finds it impossible to make friends or socialize. His brother and sister-in-law worry about him, so when he announces that he has a girlfriend he met on the Internet, they are overjoyed. But Lars' new lady is a life-size plastic woman. On the advice of a doctor, his family and the rest of the community go along with his delusion.
A deeply religious young woman spends one powerful evening reconnecting with a long-lost parent, who now makes a living as a sex worker in Jakarta.
A psychological drama based on the popular Jekyll and Hyde theme involving a strict legal official. Based on the 1893 play "Der Andere" by Paul Lindau.
Hilarion Zabala has a mysterious, recurring olfactory problem. A counselor/psychiatrist suspects a lingering case of phantosmia, a phantom smell, and possibly caused by a deep psychological fracture. One recommended radical cure is that Hilarion must go back and deal with the darkest currents of his past life in the military service. Reassigned in the very remote Pulo Penal Colony, he must also confront the horrific realities of his present situation.
The elderly Shukishi and his wife, Tomi, take the long journey from their small seaside village to visit their adult children in Tokyo. Their elder son, Koichi, a doctor, and their daughter, Shige, a hairdresser, don't have much time to spend with their aged parents, and so it falls to Noriko, the widow of their younger son who was killed in the war, to keep her in-laws company.
Fleeing New York City, a failed marriage and a fragile mental history, artist Robert Forrester moves to small-town Pennsylvania. There he becomes fascinated with the simple domesticity of a beautiful neighbor, watching her through the windows of her home --- until she invites him in for coffee. He is drawn into a relationship with the young woman whose boyfriend goes missing; Robert becomes a murder suspect, gradually sensing he is the target of a larger plot.