An unemployed construction worker heading out west stops at a remote farm in the desert to get water when his car overheats. The farm is being worked by a group of East European Catholic nuns, headed by the strict mother superior, who believes the man has been sent by God to build a much needed church in the desert.
A group of women, including Skipper, the wealthy young Jennifer and the domineering Nan, journey from the United States to South America in hopes of easily adopting children. Unfortunately, their plans are complicated by local laws that require the women to live in the foreign nation for an extended period before they can take in orphaned kids. While stuck in another country, the women bond as they share their aspirations and anxieties.
Four men from different parts of the globe, all hiding from their pasts in the same remote South American town, agree to risk their lives transporting several cases of dynamite (which is so old that it is dripping unstable nitroglycerin) across dangerous jungle terrain.
Married small-time crooks Lou-Jean and Clovis Poplin lose their baby to the state of Texas and resolve to do whatever it takes to get him back. Lou-Jean gets Clovis out of jail, and the two steal their son from his foster home, in addition to taking a highway patrolman hostage. As a massive dragnet starts to pursue them across Texas, the couple become unlikely folk heroes and even start to bond with the captive policeman.
A recently-widowed science fiction writer considers whether to adopt a hyper-imaginative 6-year-old abandoned and socially-rejected boy who says he's really from Mars.
A pregnant single mother, with two children in foster care, embraces her Bay Area community as she fights to reclaim her family.
Left penniless by her vengeful ex-husband, Madeline is forced to become a pickpocket to pay for a new wardrobe. One of her victims is a Mr. Finlay, who threatens to turn her over to the police -- until he hears Madeline's woeful tale of her cruel, possessive husband.
Violet Evergarden, a former soldier returned from war, comes to teach at a women's academy and changes a young girl's life.
A headstrong young girl in Afghanistan, ruled by the Taliban, disguises herself as a boy in order to provide for her family.
A young criminal kidnaps a couple's young son and then blackmails them into committing his crime instead of asking for a ransom.
When he loses both his wife and child, Montgomery Rogers adopts his servants' little girl and raises her as his own. Completely unaware of her origins, Emerie grows up to be a first class snob. Her socially ambitious aunt takes her to Europe to become engaged to Brooks Fitzroy, an impoverished lord (Cyril Chadwick). On the voyage back she encounters a young man, Dick Clarke who is working for his passage.
An Irish Catholic family returns to 1930s Limerick after a child's death in America. The unemployed I.R.A. veteran father struggles with poverty, prejudice, and alcoholism as the family endures harsh slum conditions.
Three sisters - Georgia, Eve, and Maddy - do what they do best with life, love, and lunacy on the telephone lines that bind - when their curmudgeonly father, Lou, is admitted to a Los Angeles Hospital. After years of wild living, intermittent affection, and constant phoning, he is finally threatening to die.
Jimmy Gralton returns from New York and reopens his beloved community hall, only to meet opposition from the local parish.
The first part is pathetic and shows Eleanor Hamlin (Edith Roberts) severing home ties with her grandparents to be "adopted" by a party of idle rich on the cooperative plan. The parties adopting her are single, and one of them, Beulah Page (Winifred Greenwood), has her own ideas on the subject of raising the young - these ideas absolutely precluding the main requisite, love.
African-American Philadelphia police detective Virgil Tibbs is arrested on suspicion of murder by Bill Gillespie, the racist police chief of tiny Sparta, Mississippi. After Tibbs proves not only his own innocence but that of another man, he joins forces with Gillespie to track down the real killer. Their investigation takes them through every social level of the town, with Tibbs making enemies as well as unlikely friends as he hunts for the truth.
David, a robotic boy—the first of his kind programmed to love—is adopted as a test case by a Cybertronics employee and his wife. Though he gradually becomes their child, a series of unexpected circumstances make this life impossible for David.
The Worth Family has been divided for years but when the matriarch, Grandma Mabel, dies suddenly, the family has to come together. The story of Family Squares takes the Worth Family on a journey discovering that not only did Grandma Mabel keep some secrets, so did everyone else. They find their way back to each other and realize that while you can’t choose your family, you can choose to be friends with them.
The story of three women searching for more potent, meaningful lives. Each is alive at a different time and place, all are linked by their yearnings and their fears. Their stories intertwine, and finally come together in a surprising, transcendent moment of shared recognition.
As he pedals through the streets of Paris to deliver meals, Souleymane recounts his story. In two days, he has to go through his asylum application interview, the key to obtaining papers, but Souleymane is not ready.