Dino is 23 and dreams of a different life. She has left the mass unemployment of the Swedish provinces in search of happiness in nouveau-riche Oslo just like hundreds of thousands of other young Swedish people. But her new life has reached a deadlock. Dino finds herself stuck in a destructive sprial of temporary jobs, financial difficulties and wild partying. When she starts an extra job as as a housekeeper in a Norwegian middle-class home, she is thrown into a reality very far from her own.
Abandoned by her family, Kya raises herself all alone in the marshes outside of her small town. When her former boyfriend is found dead, Kya is instantly branded by the local townspeople and law enforcement as the prime suspect for his murder.
Just after WW2, a romance between an innkeeper and a man with tuberculosis unravels near a thermal spring.
13-year-old Gunther Strobbe grows up surrounded by alcohol, trash and his completely useless father and uncles. Slowly but surely, he's being prepared for the same hapless life. Can he defy his destiny?
Shakes plods about his duties as party clown, and uses all of his free time getting seriously drunk. Binky, another clown, wins the spot on a local kiddie show, which depresses Shakes even more, and his boss threatens him with unemployment if he can't get his act under control.
Tomek lives only with his mother, because his father, Alek, left for the USA to earn some money. Unexpectedly, the man arrives home with a bunch of presents but no explanation as to why he has come back. Everybody seems happy but something is in the air.
Melanie (Leslie Hope) has a good, solid life, but when she’s diagnosed with cancer, her world spirals out of control. Instead of confronting her disease, she leaves her husband (Bruce Greenwood) and heads out for a bender while searching for the meaning of life. During her trip she meets a mysterious, erotic photographer (Jeff Kober) and agrees to throw caution to the wind and pose for him. This opens up dangerous choices revealed in a surprising show that ignites passionate, provocative emotions and incendiary repercussions through not only her life, but her friends and family.
A young schoolteacher descends into personal moral degradation after finding himself stranded in a brutal, menacing town in outback Australia.
Esther Blodgett is just another starry-eyed farm kid trying to break into the movies. Waitressing at a Hollywood party, she catches the eye of her idol Norman Maine, is sent for a screen test, and before long attains stardom as newly minted Vicki Lester. She and Norman marry, though his career soon dwindles to nothing due to his chronic alcoholism.
This short film is a telling portrait of the discourse about and treatment of alcohol addiction in the middle of the 20th century. In a fictional setting, the film examines the insecurities and inner motivations that cause the protagonist to lean on alcohol. His job and home life are threatened by his addiction, and the doctor to whom he finally turns explains the medical and other resources available to him.
Hud Bannon is a ruthless young man who tarnishes everything and everyone he touches. Hud represents the perfect embodiment of alienated youth, out for kicks with no regard for the consequences. There is bitter conflict between the callous Hud and his stern and highly principled father, Homer. Hud's nephew Lon admires Hud's cheating ways, though he soon becomes too aware of Hud's reckless amorality to bear him anymore. In the world of the takers and the taken, Hud is a winner. He's a cheat, but, he explains, "I always say the law was meant to be interpreted in a lenient manner."
Debbie, a working class single mother from Leeds, moves her family to Bradford, where they find themselves in an ethnic minority. Daughter Leah must adapt to being the only white girl at school.
Tommy has lost his job, his love and his life. He lives in a small apartment above the Trees Lounge, a bar which he frequents along with a few other regulars without lives. He gets a job driving an ice cream truck and ends up getting involved with the seventeen-year-old niece of his ex-girlfriend. This gets him into serious trouble with her father.
When an in-flight collision incapacitates the pilots of an airplane bound for Los Angeles, stewardess Nancy Pryor is forced to take over the controls. From the ground, her boyfriend Alan Murdock, a retired test pilot, tries to talk her through piloting and landing the 747 aircraft. Worse yet, the anxious passengers — among which are a noisy nun and a cranky man — are aggravating the already tense atmosphere.
In the apartment of Anna, who, judging by her testimony to the investigation, was on a business trip, a fire broke out at night. The son was saved, but as a result of a nervous shock he was speechless. The investigation, the mother and father of the child will find out the true cause of the tragedy.
A group of disillusioned American expatriate writers live a dissolute, hedonistic lifestyle in 1920's France and Spain.
When reporter Jean Craddock interviews Bad Blake—an alcoholic, seen-better-days country music legend—they connect, and the hard-living crooner sees a possible saving grace in a life with Jean and her young son.
Longtime alcoholic Don Birnam has been sober for ten days and appears to be over the worst... but his craving has just become more insidious. Evading a country weekend planned by his brother and girlfriend, he begins a four-day bender that just might be his last – one way or another.
Based on the real life story of Kevin Lewis, the film follows his childhood of abuse, his descent into a life of crime and the way he put his life together again afterwards.
Francie and Joe live the usual playful, fantasy filled childhoods of normal boys. However, with a violent, alcoholic father and a manic depressive, suicidal mother the pressure on Francie to grow up are immense. When Francie's world turns to madness, he tries to counter it with further insanity, with dire consequences.