A young girl is kept ignorant of her mother by her aunt. After her aunt dies, the girl is used by crooks and arrested. In prison she meets a kindly woman, who is married to a judge. The woman, unbeknownst to the girl, is her mother, and adopts her. The companion of the deceased aunt, in the midst of a ball, denounces the mother and reveals her secret to the judge and guests. The judge will not forgive his wife, so the mother and daughter leave and work among the slums to benefit humanity. Eventually, the judge relents, and seeks his wife for forgiveness, but he is too late.
An aspiring designer from the slums of Chicago puts herself through fashion school in the hopes of becoming one of the world's top designers. Her ambition leads her to Rome spurring a choice between the man she loves or her newfound success.
Rio de Janeiro. Confronted with the violence that exists in the favela where he lives, Tiago sees the only way out to become a soccer player and, in this way, help his family to have a better life. Although he is the best player in his neighborhood and the chances of being discovered by a scout are good, he faces a number of problems. One of them is Tubarão, the leader of the most powerful gang in the favela, who wants Tiago to work for him as a drug dealer. To complicate matters even more, Tiago falls in love with Juliana, Tubarão's sister.
In 1997, before the visit of the pope to Rio de Janeiro, Captain Nascimento from BOPE (Special Police Operations Battalion) is assigned to eliminate the risks of the drug dealers in a dangerous slum nearby where the pope intends to be lodged.
Best buddies Acerola and Laranjinha, about to turn 18, discover things about their missing fathers' pasts which will shatter their solid friendship, in the middle of a war between rival drug gangs from Rio's favelas.
Best friends Deco and Naldinho co-own a cargo boat in Brazil's Salvador da Bahia. They give a ride to a sultry prostitute named Karinna, and soon both men fall prey to her considerable sexual charms, pushing the bounds of their friendship to the limit.
Uptight lawyer Peter Sanderson wants to dive back into dating after his divorce and has a hard time meeting the right women. He tries online dating and lucks out when he starts chatting with a fellow lawyer. The two agree to meet in the flesh, but the woman he meets — an escaped African-American convict named Charlene — is not what he expected. Peter is freaked out, but Charlene tries to convince him to take her case and prove her innocence. Along the way, she wreaks havoc on his middle-class life as he gets a lesson in learning to lighten up.
Eleven-year-old petty criminal Maroa lives with her violent grandmother Brigida in Caracas. After her boyfriend Carlos is involved in a shooting, Maroa is arrested and sent to a school where Joaquin conducts the youth orchestra, and he asks the naturally talented Maroa to join. Days now revolve around the classes that Joaquin, the shy and unconventional teacher, gives her. He is immediately interested in this talented young girl, who lacks all notion of discipline. Joaquin, the only person to offer hope in the midst of her rejection, finds that through Maroa, his world has also changed forever.
In a violent relationship, it takes a mother’s strength to save herself and her children from the man she loved. Once Were Warriors is a violent love story set against a contemporary urban backdrop.
A group of juvenile delinquents live a violent life in the infamous slums of Mexico City; among them Pedro, whose morality is gradually corrupted and destroyed by the others.
Heimliche Ehen
Marc, an unexperienced medical doctor from Germany arrives at the Hospital Universitario del Valle in Cali, Colombia for his internship and soon finds himself in-between a raging gang war in Siloé, a Cali barrio. In the hospital he has to care mostly for shotgun wounds, while in the streets he falls in love with a stall-holder who cares for some of the children involved in drug trafficking and criminal violence. Alienating his colleagues and his host family while befriending the kids, he soon finds himself trapped in the center of the violent conflict between the gangs and has to come to a decision.
A teenager reflects on his life after being accused of cheating on the Indian version of "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?".
Residents of an enclosed neighborhood in the middle of Mexico DF are shocked by a violent crime, and for one resident in particular, young Alejandro, the drama is ratcheted up when he encounters the lone kid who escaped the event and is hiding out within the neighborhood's borders.
Toni, Aghi, Bubu, and Saras get the task of making essays. They create a free school for street children but they chose to earn money than learn.
Residents of a rundown boardinghouse in 19th-century Japan, including a mysterious old man and an aging actor, get drawn into a love triangle that turns violent. When amoral thief Sutekichi breaks off his affair with landlady Osugi to romance her younger sister, Okayo, Osugi extracts her revenge by revealing her infidelity to her jealous husband.
After a head injury, cowardly newspaper cartoonist Sathya hears a voice in his mind, foretells events and puts him in precarious situations and forces him to take on a corrupt politician.
A young man steals a car and ends up involved in a pedestrian fatality. The only witness is a girl he has just met. He threatens her life if she talks, so when she refuses to tell what she knows, she is sent to reform school.
Female prisoners in a Philippine jail are being subjected to sadistic torture. Five of the women -- along with the help of two men -- plot an escape.
Once upon a time a wise and kind old woman discovers a baby in her cabbage patch. She brings up the child and, when she dies, the boy, Totò, enters an orphanage. Totò leaves the orphanage a happy young man, and looks for work in post-war Milan. He ends up with the homeless and organizes them to build a shanty town in a vacant lot. But when greedy developers threaten the community’s land, Totò will need all the help he can get in order to find an impossible way out.