Golrokh, an Iranian author, struggles to settle her husband's debts caused by a business partner who left him to bear the consequences.
In 1843, despite the fact that Dickens is a successful writer, the failure of his latest book puts his career at a crossroads, until the moment when, struggling with inspiration and confronting reality with his childhood memories, a new character is born in the depths of his troubled mind; an old, lonely, embittered man, so vivid, so human, that a whole world grows around him, a story so inspiring that changed the meaning of Christmas forever.
A day in the life of a barbershop on the south side of Chicago. Calvin, who inherited the struggling business from his deceased father, views the shop as nothing but a burden and waste of his time. After selling the shop to a local loan shark, Calvin slowly begins to see his father's vision and legacy and struggles with the notion that he just sold it out.
In 1965, passionate musician Glenn Holland takes a day job as a high school music teacher, convinced it's just a small obstacle on the road to his true calling: writing a historic opus. As the decades roll by with the composition unwritten but generations of students inspired through his teaching, Holland must redefine his life's purpose.
High schooler Akiko has big plans to become a popular mangaka before she even graduates, but she needs to get much better at drawing if she ever wants to reach her goal. Looking for an easy fix, she signs up for an art class, thinking all her problems will soon be solved. She's in for a surprise: her new instructor is a sword-wielding taskmaster who doesn't care about manga one bit. But maybe this unconventional art teacher is just what she needs to realize her dreams!
Starting his new job as an instructor at a New England school for the deaf, James Leeds meets Sarah Norman, a young deaf woman who works at the school as a member of the custodial staff. In spite of Sarah's withdrawn emotional state, a romance slowly develops between the pair.
In the years before World War II, a penniless Japanese child is torn from her family to work as a maid in a geisha house.
When Mr. Deen discovers one of his students has been living out of his car and thrown into jail, he decides to bail him out. Determined to curb Nate’s self-destructive behavior, Deen quickly discovers a host of dark secrets slowly tearing Nate apart. What began as a good deed becomes a desperate fight to save Nate from his own demons. As Nate spirals deeper into despair, Deen must decide how far he’s willing to go to save a kid on the brink of losing everything—even himself.
College and high school serve as the backdrop for two stories about dysfunction and personal turmoil.
When linguistics professor Henry Higgins boasts that he can pass off Cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle as a princess with only six months' training, Colonel George Pickering takes him up on the bet. Eliza moves into Higgins's home and begins her rigorous training after the professor comes to a financial agreement with her dustman father, Alfred. But the plucky young woman is not the only one undergoing a transformation.
The family of an older man who runs a small sake brewery become concerned with his finances and his health after they discover him visiting an old mistress from his youth.
When their best friends announce that they're separating, a professor and his wife discover the faults in their own marriage.
Crab fishers Fred and Malte have never talked about their feelings. After a stroke of fate Fred experiences a mental breakdown.
Unable to see, hear, or speak after a childhood illness, a young woman grows up prone to violent outbursts until an eccentric tutor changes her life.
A former comic is on the run from the mob.
With his marriage to Audrey almost at an end, Ben begins a torrid affair with Mercedes, a young French student in his writing class. The affair soon spins out of control, their emotions and Ben and Audrey's family hanging in the balance.
Koizumi, a high school track and field coach, was enthusiastic about the talent of marathon runner Shizuo and his dreams of becoming an international runner. However, after graduating from high school, Shizuo, who failed to take the entrance examination, became an office clerk in Tokyo, while being loved by a male customer. Koizumi went to Tokyo and resumed Shizuo's training. Koizumi confessed his feelings for Shizuo, and the two thereafter began a love affair.
In the Welsh town of Port Talbot, 1942, Richard Jenkins lives as a wayward schoolboy, caught between the pressures of his struggling family, a devastating war and his own ambitions. However, a new opportunity arises when Richard’s natural talent for drama catches the attention of his teacher, Philip Burton.
Each day after work, Carlos, a language school teacher, frequents the heady surroundings of his local cruising ground. One evening he encounters a teenage boy from his class named Toni, and the two engage in a brief sexual tryst. As the relationship between teacher and student begins to develop, some dark truths emerge about the young man and his mysterious group of friends.
27-year-old Eto Kana lives in Tokyo and has never been out of the city before. She used to work as a designer and stay in a company dormitory but moved back to her family home after resigning due to the stress from interpersonal relationships. Meanwhile, Kana’s family gets a call about an elderly granduncle who got injured. She goes to Kyoto where he lives at the request of her worried mother and stays there for several days to take care of him.