Notes

When Manny Singer's wife dies, his young daughter Molly becomes mute and withdrawn. To help cope with looking after Molly, he hires sassy housekeeper Corrina Washington, who coaxes Molly out of her shell and shows father and daughter a whole new way of life. Manny and Corrina's friendship delights Molly and enrages the other townspeople.

Three stories which each focus on one of three types of relationships: family, friendship, and love. The first story is about conflicted manager on a business trip who is intrigued by an elderly worker and investigates his life. The second story is about a young father who receives a letter that brings him to a foreign land, where old emotions come unburied. The last story is about a visiting professor from overseas who sets a student's heart fluttering, while having to deal with his own.

In a dystopian near future, a class of people are vaccinated with Anhedonia, a vaccine that causes the loss of pleasure and feelings in order to keep a population focused on farm work.

Charlie Simms is a student at a private preparatory school who comes from a poor family. To earn the money for his flight home to Gresham, Oregon for Christmas, Charlie takes a job over Thanksgiving looking after retired U.S. Army officer Lieutenant Colonel Frank Slade, a cantankerous middle-aged man who lives with his niece and her family.

A boy and his ageing grandfather are connected by the music his grandfather plays. When the grandfather suddenly can’t remember how to play and his very own light goes out, the boy must find a way to bring his grandfather and the light back.

The story is set at the beginning of the 20th century in Sicily. Salvatore, a very poor farmer, and a widower, decides to emigrate to the US with all his family, including his old mother. Before they embark, they meet Lucy. She is supposed to be a British lady and wants to come back to the States. Lucy, or Luce as Salvatore calls her, for unknown reasons wants to marry someone before to arrive to Ellis Island in New York. Salvatore accepts the proposal. Once they arrive in Ellis Island they spend the quarantine period trying to pass the examinations to be admitted to the States. Tests are not so simple for poor farmers coming from Sicily. Their destiny is in the hands of the custom officers.

Love for the same woman causes conflict between an over-achieving blind athlete and the brother who made him that way.

Tianyu is a blind child who dreams of a life very different from the one planned for him by his mother. Strange as it may seem, she wants to turn him into a table tennis champion. When the boy disappears one day, his mother sets out in search of him, and she soon understands that she needs to hear and feel what her son sees in order to find him. Thus, she too must enter a world of darkness.

The Man from the Embassy

When Johannes gets caught by his girlfriend while laying on the bathroom floor watching porn and masturbating she doesn’t care and wants him to enjoy himself. That makes Johannes lose the feeling of shame he needs and sends him into an existential crisis and loses his ability to masturbate. Trying to regain that shame leads to an explosive confrontation for them as a couple.

Wayne Newton stars as an accused thug hiding out at a camp for blind children.

An IRS agent with a fateful secret embarks on an extraordinary journey of redemption by forever changing the lives of seven strangers.

A psychosomatically deaf, dumb and blind boy becomes a master pinball player and the object of a religious cult.

After spending two decades in England, Bill Bryson returns to the U.S., where he decides the best way to connect with his homeland is to hike the Appalachian Trail with one of his oldest friends.

Phosphenes

A young American soldier, rendered in pseudocoma from an artillery shell from WWI, recalls his life leading up to that point.

A blind man has an operation to regain his sight at the urging of his girlfriend and must deal with the changes to his life.

A young nurse, Alma, is put in charge of Elisabeth Vogler: an actress who is seemingly healthy in all respects, but will not talk. As they spend time together, Alma speaks to Elisabeth constantly, never receiving any answer. The time they spend together only strengthens the crushing realization that one does not exist.

A man wanders out of the desert not knowing who he is. His brother finds him, and helps to pull his memory back of the life he led before he walked out on his family and disappeared four years earlier.

A mute Scottish woman arrives in colonial New Zealand for an arranged marriage. Her husband refuses to move her beloved piano, giving it to neighbor George Baines, who agrees to return the piano in exchange for lessons. As desire swirls around the duo, the wilderness consumes the European enclave.