After her husband deserts her, working-class mother Ray Eddy is in great need of money to find a home. Lured by the possibility of easy cash, she joins Lila, a widowed Mohawk who earns a living by smuggling immigrants from Canada to the U.S. across the St. Lawrence.
As a young child, Hana loses her family to a devastating tsunami that wipes out her town. At a shelter, distant relative Jungo sees her wandering and adopts her as his daughter.
When a Spanish Jesuit goes into the South American wilderness to build a mission in the hope of converting the Indians of the region, a slave hunter is converted and joins his mission. When Spain sells the colony to Portugal, they are forced to defend all they have built against the Portuguese aggressors.
A Hollywood actor grows tired of making the same corporate movies, so he moves to Argentina to find more experimental and meaningful work.
After suffering through a long and unsuccessful series of fertility treatments, Satoko and her husband Kiyokazu make the decision to adopt a child. Six years after adopting a boy they named Asato, Satoko has quit her job to concentrate fully on her husband and son. The family lives a peaceful existence until the arrival of a stranger.
The Roma Viktoria leaves her home town of Budapest to earn the big money in Switzerland. Every night she finds herself as a prostitute in the back alleys of Zurich. Although surrounded by greed, fast sex and violence she also finds friendship, love and herself.
In Minangkabau, West Sumatera, Yuda a skilled practitioner of Silat Harimau is in the final preparations to begin his "Merantau" a century's old rites-of-passage to be carried out by the community's young men that will see him leave the comforts of his idyllic farming village and make a name for himself in the bustling city of Jakarta.
An eleven year-old girl's unconventional yet deeply loving relationship with her mother is harshly broken. Along her journey, including her quest to discover her father, she learns how to embrace every moment with determination and unrelenting self-confidence.
Jaime has lost his job and has to provide for his wife, son and daughter. Pressured by this circumstances, he visits his mom, who lives in an apartment he owns, to ask her to move with him so he can sell the apartment. But she is not going to cooperate. And, to Jaime's surprise, she also has a boyfriend!
Freddie is starting as a thug for Jazdec the Polish, a pimp and concealer of illicit goods. Freddy's love for Larna, whom he dreams to snatch from prostitution, drive them into jeopardy under the clutches of a Chinese Godfather. To see Larna alive, Freddie must kill the so-called Mr. Zhu, a strange Chinese Zorro who just arrived in Paris to retrieve a young runaway fellow countrywoman.
A mysterious tale set around a traditional British family on the eve of World War Two. Oblivious to the looming shadow of World War II, the wealthy Keyes maintain a confident façade in the British countryside until daughter Anne becomes an unexpected pawn. Her accidental discovery of secret recordings creates a rift in the family.
Eleven young film-makers got together to collaborate in this atypical project. Atypical not only because of its technical specs, but because of its narrative structure. There are several scenes with only the city in common, and more as a conceptual presence at that than as a precise geography. None of those scenes contains a single "story": Each one of them is part of a larger situation that we cannot see, as though the beginning and end of each "story" had to be filled in by the audience.
A hostage situation gone bad. Jesús, an amateur thief, holds prisoner a group of clients. But nothing is what it seems. Behind the gates of the drugstore the story will unfold in two times. On one side, to the inevitable end: the police will shoot their way inn. And on the other side, to the past, unveiling how Jesús got caught in this situation, where the hostages are not the real victims, but something more sinister. Retracing step by step, reveling the truth, playing with the prejudices and beliefs of the audience on racial hate, social prejudices, and the intolerance. How far are we willing to go to survive?
The story of an old Jewish widow named Daisy Werthan and her relationship with her black chauffeur, Hoke. From an initial mere work relationship grew in 25 years a strong friendship between the two very different characters, in a time when those types of relationships were shunned.
Detective John Shaft travels incognito to Ethiopia, then France, to bust a human trafficking ring.
Peter Winter is a young schizophrenic who is desperately trying to get his daughter back from her adoptive family. He attempts to function in a world that, for him, is filled with strange voices, electrical noise, disconcerting images, and jarringly sudden emotional shifts. During his quest, he runs afoul of the law and an ongoing murder investigation.
When elderly pensioner Umberto Domenico Ferrari returns to his boarding house from a protest calling for a hike in old-age pensions, his landlady demands her 15,000-lire rent by the end of the month or he and his small dog will be turned out onto the street. Unable to get the money in time, Umberto fakes illness to get sent to a hospital, giving his beloved dog to the landlady's pregnant and abandoned maid for temporary safekeeping.
An epic tale spanning forty years in the life of Celie, an African-American woman living in the South who survives incredible abuse and bigotry. After Celie's abusive father marries her off to the equally debasing 'Mister' Albert Johnson, things go from bad to worse, leaving Celie to find companionship anywhere she can. She perseveres, holding on to her dream of one day being reunited with her sister in Africa.
Coming of age comedy about a Korean girl adopted by an American family.
After the disappearance of some of their close friends on their 21st birthday, overly determined Isa is left to pick up the pieces of the tragedy, fueled by their misdirected motivation. Years later, lost, misguided, and frustrated, Isa is about to call it quits. But not before the lead, they've been looking for comes knocking at her door.