Léon, the top hit man in New York, has earned a rep as an effective "cleaner". But when his next-door neighbors are wiped out by a loose-cannon DEA agent, he becomes the unwilling custodian of 12-year-old Mathilda. Before long, Mathilda's thoughts turn to revenge, and she considers following in Léon's footsteps.
A Polish-Jewish family comes to the U.S. at the beginning of the twentieth century. There, the family and their children try to make themselves a better future in the so-called promised land.
In the slums of the upper West Side of Manhattan, tensions are high as a gang of Polish-Americans compete against a gang of recently immigrated Puerto Ricans, but this doesn't stop two romantics from each gang falling in love.
In early 1860s New York, Irish immigrant Amsterdam Vallon is released from prison and returns to the Five Points, seeking revenge against his father's killer, William Cutting, a powerful anti-immigrant gang leader. He knows that revenge can only be attained by infiltrating Cutting's inner circle. Vallon's journey becomes a fight for personal survival and to find a place for the Irish people.
In California, a Mexican-American laborer is falsely accused of shooting the racist farmer he was working for after the farmer stiffed him with a bad check.
A native Briton banished to Australia for murder, and his wife, Henrietta, the disturbed sister of the man he was convicted on killing, set out to help her conquer her demons and return her life to normal.
In southern France, a Franco-Arabic shipyard worker along with his partner's daughter pursues his dream of opening a restaurant.
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.
Chronicling one harrowing day in the life of Luciana, a young woman struggling to make ends meet while striving to escape her past. As Luciana’s day unfolds, she is whisked, physically and emotionally, through a series of troublesome, unforeseeable extremes.
Teacher and novelist François Bégaudeau plays a version of himself as he negotiates a year with his racially mixed students from a tough Parisian neighborhood.
Lorna is a young Albanian woman in a marriage of convenience with Claudy, a heroin addict. Just as Lorna is about to be granted Belgian citizenship, Claudy finds the strength to detox; this presents a problem not only for Lorna, but for the criminal who brokered the deal.
Naureen Shah's life is turned upside down when her best friend, Yousef Ahmed, tries to die by suicide, a Cardinal sin in Islam. The fallout that ensues with their friendship, his family, and the greater community traps and alienates Yousef, when all he needs is the understanding and support of the people he loves.
Nazi skinheads in Melbourne take out their anger on local Vietnamese, who are seen as threatening racial purity. Finally the Vietnamese have had enough and confront the skinheads in an all-out confrontation, sending the skinheads running. A woman who is prone to epileptic seizures joins the skins' merry band, and helps them on their run from justice, but is her affliction also a sign of impurity?
A composer and his daughter emigrate to America in the hope that he can sell his symphony. But he meets with little success and begins to give up hope. His daughter and her friends, however, never give up hope.
Selma, a Czech immigrant on the verge of blindness, struggles to make ends meet for herself and her son, who has inherited the same genetic disorder and will suffer the same fate without an expensive operation. When life gets too difficult, Selma learns to cope through her love of musicals, escaping life's troubles – even if just for a moment – by dreaming up little numbers to the rhythmic beats of her surroundings.
A group of teenagers living in a housing project in the outskirts of Paris rehearse a scene from Marivaux's play of the same name. Krimo is determined not to take part, but after developing feelings for Lydia, he quickly assumes the main role and love interest in the play.
Boston, 1920. Italian immigrants Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti are charged and unfairly tried for murder on the basis of their anarchist political beliefs.
In the 1990s, an immigrant single mother raises her teenage son in the Canadian suburbs, determined to provide a better life for him than the one she left behind in South Korea.
A Mexican immigrant struggles to fit into a small town in Wisconsin until he discovers ice fishing.
Following the death of his wife, Ip Man travels to San Francisco to ease tensions between the local kung fu masters and his star student, Bruce Lee, while searching for a better future for his son.