The Volunteer

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.

True story of Tom Butterfield and his crusade to provide family life for homeless children, becoming not only the first bachelor caretaker, but the youngest single adult to become a legal foster parent in the state of Missouri.

From the 17th floor of an office building, Pierre is staring out a colleague that is here for hours.

When a precious little girl dies tragically of a rare heart condition, her grieving parents are left to pick up the pieces of their once perfect life. In a sequence of events influenced by faith (and perhaps miracles), they are guided to a homeless girl on the streets, and a battle ensues to reunite as a family and heal their broken hearts.

A near-penniless drifter's journey to Alaska in search of work is interrupted when she loses her dog while attempting to shoplift food for it.

Joe Buck is a wide-eyed hustler from Texas hoping to score big with wealthy New York City women; he finds a companion in Enrico "Ratso" Rizzo, an ailing swindler with a bum leg and a quixotic fantasy of escaping to Florida.

After her car is towed and she is left with a shocking $21,634 tow bill, an unhoused woman wages a relentless fight to reclaim her car—and her life—exposing a broken system and redefining what it means to persevere against all odds.

A group of juvenile delinquents live a violent life in the infamous slums of Mexico City; among them Pedro, whose morality is gradually corrupted and destroyed by the others.

James Bowen finds himself the target of an animal welfare investigation that threatens to take away his beloved cat, Bob, at Christmas.

14-year-old Enid Crowley hates her name and everything about her boring life. All this changes when she becomes a full-time babysitter to a sheltered boy. The two hook up for some hilarious adventures in the park with a mysterious bag lady and a street musician. With the help of Enid's boyfriend, Seth, they try to give the park dwellers a "special evening," but their good deed backfires and lands them in trouble.

A violated girl is trapped in an underworld of shame. As a child, she was exploited by her father and his friends, and then thrown to the streets as a vulnerable teenager. Despite life going against Mel at every turn, she is determined to see the good in people and find hope before her past catches up with her.

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.

Two young children living illegally in a model apartment outside Boston are left to fend for themselves when their hardworking mother disappears

A lowly comic book shop owner discovers a mysterious young woman loitering in his shop, leading to an unlikely friendship.

An alcoholic drifter spends Halloween in his hometown of Albany, New York after returning there for the first time in decades.

Drama, entirely in verse, following three men who sleep on the streets of Manchester in their vehicles, having lost all their economic and social power.

Amy is taken on a impromptu camping trip by her Dad on her 15th Birthday. Along with her little brother, the endless summer turns into an inescapable future.

Tweek City is a week in the life of Bill, a potentially closeted, half-Latino, small-time speed dealer in San Francisco's Mission District. Bill is stuck on an endless walk from one empty experience to the next. Only Bill's friend Jerm has the ability to connect and ground him in reality. When Jerm makes an ill-advised stage dive, Bill plunges into a downward spiral that takes him on a nocturnal journey through the streets of San Francisco and ultimately down to Los Angeles where he crashes his high school sweetheart's wedding. From his sleep-deprived, hallucinogenic state, Bill fails miserably in a desperate attempt to reconnect with his first and only love. With nowhere else to go, Bill jacks a car and ends up at the deserted drive-in theater of his childhood where he is forced to confront the ghosts that he had tried to leave behind.

When his father flees from debt, carefree college student Osamu sees his life turn upside-down. Expelled from school and evicted from his apartment, he becomes one of Japan’s many ‘net cafe refugees’, barely scraping by each day with temporary and part-time work. Even though he’s still in Tokyo, his circumstances drive him to see and experience his home city in new ways. Trying to survive, Osamu gradually acquaints himself with the ‘invisible’ spaces occupied by the wanderers and homeless of Tokyo… people just like himself.

Hannah and Tahir fall in love while homeless on the streets of New York. Shelter explores how they got there, and as we learn about their pasts we realize they need each other to build a future.