A quintet of cabbies in five cities and their remarkable fares on the same eventful night.
A man wanders out of the desert not knowing who he is. His brother finds him, and helps to pull his memory back of the life he led before he walked out on his family and disappeared four years earlier.
Tom Joad returns to his home after a jail sentence to find his family kicked out of their farm due to foreclosure. He catches up with them on his Uncle’s farm, and joins them the next day as they head for California and a new life... Hopefully.
Crotchety retired doctor Isak Borg travels from Stockholm to Lund, Sweden, with his pregnant and unhappy daughter-in-law, Marianne, in order to receive an honorary degree from his alma mater. Along the way, they encounter a series of hitchhikers, each of whom causes the elderly doctor to muse upon the pleasures and failures of his own life. These include the vivacious young Sara, a dead ringer for the doctor's own first love.
Retired farmer and widower Alvin Straight learns one day that his distant brother Lyle has suffered a stroke and may not recover. Alvin is determined to make things right with Lyle while he still can, but his brother lives in Wisconsin, while Alvin is stuck in Iowa with no car and no driver's license. He then has the idea of making the trip on his old lawnmower, thus beginning a picturesque and at times deeply spiritual odyssey.
When Gelsomina, a naïve young woman, is purchased from her impoverished mother by brutish circus strongman Zampanò to be his wife and partner, she loyally endures her husband's coldness and abuse as they travel the Italian countryside performing together. Soon Zampanò must deal with his jealousy and conflicted feelings about Gelsomina when she finds a kindred spirit in Il Matto, the carefree circus fool, and contemplates leaving Zampanò.
A transgender woman takes an unexpected journey when she learns that she had a son, now a teenage runaway hustling on the streets of New York.
When car dealer Charlie Babbitt learns that his estranged father has died, he returns home to Cincinnati, where he discovers that he has a savant older brother named Raymond and that his father's $3 million fortune is being left to the mental institution in which Raymond lives. Motivated by his father's money, Charlie checks Raymond out of the facility in order to return with him to Los Angeles. The brothers' cross-country trip ends up changing both their lives.
After learning that a boy their age has been accidentally killed near their rural homes, four boys decide to go see the body. Gordie, Vern, Chris, and Teddy encounter a mean junk man and a marsh full of leeches, but they also learn more about one another and their very different home lives. Just a lark at first, the boys' adventure evolves into a defining event in their lives.
After breaking up with her girlfriend, a nightclub singer, Jane, answers a personal ad from Robin, a real estate agent with AIDS, seeking a cross-country travel partner. On their journey from New York City to Los Angeles, the two stop by Pittsburgh to pick up Jane's friend Holly, who is trying to escape an abusive relationship. With three distinct personalities, the women must overcome their differences to help one another.
Two middle-aged men embark on a spiritual journey through Californian wine country. One is an unpublished novelist suffering from depression, and the other is only days away from walking down the aisle.
Humbert Humbert is a middle-aged British novelist who is both appalled by and attracted to the vulgarity of American culture. When he comes to stay at the boarding house run by Charlotte Haze, he soon becomes obsessed with Lolita, the woman's teenaged daughter.
On her way home from College, a young girl meets a mysterious hitchhiker. Their journey together will lead to unique revelations and a burgeoning relationship that will change their lives.
On a road trip through the American South, two close friends experience a major radio malfunction, followed by curious encounters at an Alabama auto repair shop.
Salvo was five when his father Vincenzo was arrested, practically before his eyes. Seven years later Salvo lives with his uncles and his cousin a controlled and peaceful existence in the Turin area, but his father returns and claims his son for four days. Vincenzo has to carry an important load to Bari and brings Salvo (nomen est omen) with him as insurance: a child is better than a gun, he says, because his presence in the event of a possible police detention can have a distracting effect . This however is not the only reason why Vincenzo wants Salvo with him, and the "Salv-atore" child will prove to be a potential vehicle of redemption for that messed up father, but not entirely devoid of feelings and attentions.
Trucker Rubber Duck and his buddies Pig Pen, Widow Woman and Spider Mike use their CB radios to warn one another of the presence of cops. But conniving Sheriff Wallace is hip to the truckers' tactics, and begins tricking the drivers through his own CB broadcasts. Facing constant harassment from the law, Rubber Duck and his pals use their radios to coordinate a vast convoy and rule the road.
When young Brian discovers plans to close a convent of delightfully eccentric nuns, he sets off with them on a wild road trip across New Zealand to save their home.
In this loose adaptation of Shakespeare's "Henry IV," Mike Waters is a hustler afflicted with narcolepsy. Scott Favor is the rebellious son of a mayor. Together, the two travel from Portland, Oregon to Idaho and finally to the coast of Italy in a quest to find Mike's estranged mother. Along the way they turn tricks for money and drugs, eventually attracting the attention of a wealthy benefactor and sexual deviant.
In search of kicks in Reykjavik in the year 2000, a pretty teenager, Stella, teams up with a handsome alcoholic, Robbi, and in a stolen car careers through Iceland with unexpected and bizarre consequences.
Lincoln Hawk a hard-luck big-rig trucker takes us under the glaring Las Vegas lights for all the boisterous action of the World Armwrestling Championship. Relying on wits and willpower, Hawk tries to rebuild his life by capturing the first-place prize money, and the love of the son he abandoned years earlier into the keeping of his rich, ruthless father-in-law.