Salvador, Bahia, January 1835. After more than a decade of hard work, Guilhermina, 27, a slave of Muslim origin, finally gets the resources to buy her manumission, as well as that of Teresa, 11, her teenage daughter. But, contrary to an old promise, his “lord”, farmer Souza Velho, refuses to sell the girl's letter. When Pacific Licutan, Salvador's most esteemed Islamic leadership, is arrested by the Bahian authorities, the Muslim community goes into a boiling state and begins to articulate a jihad. In desperation, Guilhermina sees in the uprising the only way to win her daughter's freedom.
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.
Rabie is a kid from Sétif in 1980, trying to collect money to buy a wheelchair for his paralyzid sister Sassia, so she can get out of the house.
Two childhood friends are recruited for a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv.
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 small suburban town receives a visit from a castaway unfinished science experiment named Edward.
A drama focused on the friendship between a high-functioning autistic woman and a man who is traumatized after a fatal car accident.
In 1971 Salford fish-and-chip shop owner George Khan expects his family to follow his strict Pakistani Muslim ways. But his children, with an English mother and having been born and brought up in Britain, increasingly see themselves as British and start to reject their father's rules on dress, food, religion, and living in general.
A mountain man who wishes to live the life of a hermit becomes the unwilling object of a long vendetta by Indians when he proves to be the match of their warriors in one-on-one combat on the early frontier.
An undocumented immigrant, Roberto, seeks a way to become lawful, but all efforts are put on hold when he becomes a new father at the onset of the US government's 'Zero Tolerance' child separation policy at the US / Mexico border.
In the beginning of the 19th century, Johannes Elias Alder is born in a small village in the Austrian mountains. While growing up he is considered strange by the other villagers and discovers his love of music, especially rebuilding and playing the organ at the village church. After experiencing an "acoustic wonder", his eye color changes and he can hear even the most subtle sounds.
Mexican immigrant and single mother Flor Moreno finds housekeeping work with Deborah and John Clasky, a well-off couple with two children of their own. When Flor admits she can't handle the schedule because of her daughter, Cristina, Deborah decides they should move into the Clasky home. Cultures clash and tensions run high as Flor and the Claskys struggle to share space while raising their children on their own, and very different, terms.
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.
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?
Harvard graduate James Averill serves as the sheriff of prosperous Jackson County, Wyoming, standing at the center of a conflict between impoverished immigrants and affluent cattle farmers. Politically connected ranchers enlist mercenary Nathan Champion—who is also vying for the affections of local madam Ella Watson—to combat the immigrant uprising. As tensions escalate, both Averill and Champion start to question their decisions.
Angela Bennett is a freelance computer systems analyst who tracks down software viruses. At night she hooks up to the internet and chats to others 'surfing the net'. While de-bugging a new high-tech game for a cyber friend, she comes across a top secret program and becomes the target of a mysterious organization who will stop at nothing to erase her identity and her existence, in order to protect the project.
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.
Roro, a foreign worker in Swedish parks, loves his girlfriend but is about to marry another girl to prevent her from being sent back to Lebanon. Meanwhile, Roro's best friend, Måns, has serious problems getting an erection.
Grady is a 50-ish English professor who hasn't had a thing published in years—not since he wrote his award winning 'Great American Novel' 7 years ago. This weekend proves even worse than he could imagine as he finds himself reeling from one misadventure to another in the company of a new wonder boy author.