On a quiet street in Helsinki, Sachie has opened a diner featuring rice balls. For a month she has no customers. Then, in short order, she has her first customer, meets Midori, a gangly Japanese tourist, and invites her to stay with her.
One unlucky evening, Louis Cropa, a part-time bookmaker, discovers that his restaurant has become a hotbed of conflicting characters. In addition to having to please a whiny food critic, Louis must fend off a hostile takeover from a pair of gangsters, to whom his sous-chef is in debt. Further, Louis has an argument with his son, the star chef, whose culinary creativity has brought success to the business.
An American woman is stranded in Tokyo after breaking up with her boyfriend. Searching for direction in life, she trains to be a ramen chef under a tyrannical Japanese master.
In southern France, a Franco-Arabic shipyard worker along with his partner's daughter pursues his dream of opening a restaurant.
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.
Like millions of kids around the world, Santiago harbors the dream of being a professional footballer... However, living in the Barrios section of Los Angeles, he thinks it is only that—a dream. Until one day an extraordinary turn of events has him trying out for Premiership club Newcastle United.
After getting kicked out of college, Arlo decides to visit his friend Alice for Thanksgiving dinner. After dinner is over, Arlo volunteers to take the trash to the dump but finds it closed for the holiday, so he dumps the trash in the bottom of a ravine. This act of littering gets him arrested and sends him on a bizarre journey.
A sex-addicted con-man pays for his mother's hospital bills by playing on the sympathies of those who rescue him from choking to death.
A filmmaker holds a series of boundary-pushing auditions for his latest project: a thriller on the subject of female pleasure.
Primo and Secondo, two immigrant brothers, pin their hopes on a banquet honoring Louis Prima to save their struggling restaurant.
Waitress Saara meets handsome journalist Joni, and soon moves in to live with him. Joni tries his best to satisfy Saara sexually but, disturbed by violent lesbian fantasies, she is unable to experience orgasm. Trying to cope with the situation, Saara has another brief affair back in her old home town.
The circularity of violence seen in a story that circles on itself. In Macedonia, during the war in Bosnia, Christians hunt an ethnic Albanian girl who may have murdered one of their own. A young monk who's taken a vow of silence offers her protection. In London, a photographic editor who's pregnant needs to talk it out with her estranged husband and chooses a toney restaurant.
Cathy is a sous-chef wanting to open a restaurant. With financial difficulties, Cathy accepts a job at a shelter for young migrants. At first she hates the job then her passion for cuisine starts to change children's lives.
A misanthropic author, a single mother and waitress, and a gay artist form an unlikely friendship after the artist is assaulted in a robbery.
Loving but irresponsible dad Daniel Hillard, estranged from his exasperated spouse, is crushed by a court order allowing only weekly visits with his kids. When Daniel learns his ex needs a housekeeper, he gets the job -- disguised as a British nanny. Soon he becomes not only his children's best pal but the kind of parent he should have been from the start.
Sex always gets in the way of friendships between men and women. At least, that's what Harry Burns believes. So when Harry meets Sally Albright and a deep friendship blossoms between them, Harry's determined not to let his attraction to Sally destroy it. But when a night of weakness ends in a morning of panic, can the pair avoid succumbing to Harry's fears by remaining friends and admitting they just might be the perfect match for each other?
A law firm brings in its "fixer" to remedy the situation after a lawyer has a breakdown while representing a chemical company that he knows is guilty in a multi-billion dollar class action suit.
The tale of two brothers with serious financial woes. When a third party proposes they turn to crime, things go bad and the two become enemies.
Wealthy rancher Bick Benedict and dirt-poor cowboy Jett Rink both woo Leslie Lynnton, a beautiful young woman from Maryland who is new to Texas. She marries Benedict, but she is shocked by the racial bigotry of the White Texans against the local people of Mexican descent. Rink discovers oil on a small plot of land, and while he uses his vast, new wealth to buy all the land surrounding the Benedict ranch, the Benedict's disagreement over prejudice fuels conflict that runs across generations.
A woman in her early 50s who wants to open her own wine bar after being the head sommellière for a Michelin-starred restaurant.