A pregnant single mother, with two children in foster care, embraces her Bay Area community as she fights to reclaim her family.
Aurora, a finicky woman, is in search of true love while her daughter faces marital issues. Together, they help each other deal with problems and find reasons to live a joyful life.
Annie frantically flees Montreal for the US with her young son, Felix and teenage daughter, Sarah, fearing the repercussions after Sarah severely injures her school bully. When their car breaks down just outside a small town in the Adirondacks, the family is stranded. Paul, a single father and the town's lone mechanic, isn't able to fix the car until the following week. Annie's stubborn insistence to leave town at all costs comes head-to-head with Paul's unwillingness to give in. When Sarah realizes that her secret is out in the open, she runs away, forcing Annie and Paul to join forces to find her. When Paul's traumatic past is revealed, Annie realizes that she is not the only one running and comes to terms with facing the music.
A young widow flees from Rome during WWII and takes her lonely twelve-year-old-daughter to her rural hometown but the horrors of war soon catch up with them.
Ji-so, a young girl who doesn't have a house because of her bankrupted dad. In order to get money to buy a house she plan to steals wealthy people's dogs to earn reward money when she returns them.
Busy realtor and single mom Angela meets bakery owner William after her daughter tries to set them up by having him cater her scout troop’s holiday event.
While out to avoid spending time with her narcissistic and promiscuous mother, sixteen-year-old Jo has a brief affair that leaves her pregnant and abandoned. When her mother remarries, Jo's only support becomes her friend Geoffrey, a homosexual.
Just before Christmas, department store clerk Steve Mason meets big spending customer Connie Ennis, who's actually a comparison shopper sent by another store. Steve lets her go, which gets him fired. They spend the afternoon together, which doesn't sit well with Connie's steady suitor, Carl, when he finds out, but delights her young son Timmy, who quickly takes to Steve.
After Alicia's obsessive ex-husband Victor is released from prison, she is determined to protect herself and their son Malcolm. Alicia resists Victor's demands to reconcile and reunite as a family, but in a twisted turn of events, Victor traps Alicia underground and buries her alive. Alicia pushes down the panic and fear of suffocating and manages to claw her way of out of her grave. Now freed, she searches desperately for her son who she fears may be next. Inspired by a true story.
Hubert, a brash 17-year-old, is confused and torn by a love-hate relationship with his mother that consumes him more and more each day. After distressing ordeals and tragic episodes, Hubert will find his mother on the banks of Saint Lawrence river, where he grew up, and where a murder will be committed: the murder of childhood.
Following an unexpected tragedy, child psychologist Malcolm Crowe meets a nine year old boy named Cole Sear, who is hiding a dark secret.
Melvin Udall, a cranky, bigoted, obsessive-compulsive writer of romantic fiction, is rude to everyone he meets, including his gay neighbor, Simon. After Simon is brutally attacked and hospitalized, Melvin finds his life turned upside down when he has to look after Simon's dog. In addition, Carol, the only waitress at the local diner who will tolerate him, leaves work to care for her chronically ill son, making it impossible for Melvin to eat breakfast.
Tita is passionately in love with Pedro, but her controlling mother forbids her from marrying him. When Pedro marries her sister, Tita throws herself into her cooking and discovers she can transfer her emotions through the food she prepares, infecting all who eat it with her intense heartbreak.
Sixteen-year-old Tomi trusts no one and does his best to protect his little sister Aino from the dangers of the world. But Aino is changing, fast. Because of his own fear of loneliness, Tomi tries to stop his sister, but he will eventually find out that you cannot control another person by force.
Raju faces many hurdles and disappointments in matters of the heart throughout his life. But as a clown in a circus, he tries to make his audience laugh at the cost of his own sorrows. Along the way, Raju loves and loses, but must always keep a smile on his face because, in the words of his circus manager, "The show must go on."
When single mother Maria discovers her seven-year-old son José has fallen in love with Pamela Anderson, she summons all her powers of invention to ensure Pamela responds.
Single mother Diana struggles to provide for her child and pay for her college education. When she meets two dancers from a nearby gentlemen's club, Diana's convinced there's fast money to be made stripping.
20-year-old Jing Hao came to Shenzhen to live with his young sister alone. The siblings live a warm yet straitened life. In an effort to pay for his sister's expensive surgery, Jing Hao gets an opportunity by chance, thinking that a better life is coming, but unexpectedly encounters a serious setback. Under the pressure of both time and money, Jing Hao, who has no way out, decides to take a desperate gamble. Can this ignite the spark of hope for his troubled ordinary life?
A massage therapist looking to overcome her addictions and reconnect with her son, whose father is an anthropologist in South America studying the Yanomani people, moves in with a wealthy ex-client in New Jersey.
Forced to give up his dreams of art school, Zach works dead-end jobs to support his sister and her son. Questioning his life, he paints, surfs and hangs out with his best friend, Gabe. When Gabe's older brother returns home for the summer, Zach suddenly finds himself drawn into a relationship he didn't expect.