A man explains how he was obsessed when he was younger by a mysterious room and an extraordinary rarefied piano music that drifted through its open window during the night. Forty years later, returning to his home town after having spent most of his life abroad, in "a bunch of different places", he asks one of his friends to rent a room for him. As chance would have it, it turns out to be the same room which attracted him when he was a young man. What drew him again to this room?
Anna and Marie are two women who could possibly love each other, but each must decide if she is willing to throw away her old life in pursuit of this new overwhelming feeling.
A grandfather, in the final stage of his existence, asks two of his grandchildren to kill him because he wants to die by the hand of someone who bears his own blood. However, the young children discover a truth that will make them take the opposite decision.
A tale about the relationship between a businessman who launders money for a Mafia figure and his gangster bodyguard.
Teen skater Ken Park (nicknamed Krap Nek; his name spelled and pronounced backward) kills himself at a Visalia skate park; his death bookends the lives of four other young people who knew him: Shawn, the most conventional; Tate brims with psychotic rage; Claude is habitually harassed by his brutish father and coddled, rather uncomfortably, by his enormously pregnant mother; and Peaches looks after her devoutly religious father, but yearns for freedom. They're all rather tight, or so they claim.
Ruthless silver miner, turned oil prospector, Daniel Plainview, moves to oil-rich California. Using his son to project a trustworthy, family-man image, Plainview cons local landowners into selling him their valuable properties for a pittance. However, local preacher Eli Sunday suspects Plainview's motives and intentions, starting a slow-burning feud that threatens both their lives.
A Chicago weather man, separated from his wife and children, debates whether professional and personal success are mutually exclusive.
Ishaan Awasthi is an eight-year-old whose world is filled with wonders that no one else seems to appreciate. Colours, fish, dogs, and kites don't seem important to the adults, who are much more interested in things like homework, marks, and neatness. Ishaan cannot seem to get anything right in class; he is then sent to boarding school, where his life changes forever.
The story of the first cloned human being - told in her own words: At the age of thirty the world-famous composer Iris Sellin learns that she has an incurable illness. She - a person who wanted to live for ever - does however not give in. In order to preserve her art and also herself, beyond death, for all posterity, she has herself cloned. Her daughter Siri, whom, in this way, she turns into her virtual twin, learns as a child that she is the world's first cloned human being. In fact a blueprint: a blueprint of her mother. From that moment on nothing is as it was before...
When two brothers organize the robbery of their parents' jewelry store, the job goes horribly wrong, triggering a series of events that send them and their family hurtling towards a shattering climax.
Pianist David Helfgott, driven by his father and teachers, has a breakdown. Years later he returns to the piano, to popular if not critical acclaim.
A young father, separated from his wife, takes drastic measures to see his newborn son, who he feels is being unfairly kept from him. However, alliances shift and feelings change as accusations fly in the course of a phone conversation.
After the death of her father, Little Voice or LV becomes a virtual recluse, never going out and hardly ever saying a word. She just sits in her bedroom listening to her father's collection of old records of Shirley Bassey, Marilyn Monroe and various other famous female singers. But at night time, LV sings, imitating these great singers with surprising accuracy. One night she is overheard by one of her mother's boyfriends, who happens to be a talent agent. He manages to convince her that her talent is special and arranges for her to perform at the local night club, but several problems arise.
Nine-year-old Frankie and his single mum Lizzie have been on the move ever since Frankie can remember, most recently arriving in a seaside Scottish town. Wanting to protect her deaf son from the truth that they've run away from his father, Lizzie has invented a story that he is away at sea on the HMS Accra. Every few weeks, Lizzie writes Frankie a make-believe letter from his father, telling of his adventures in exotic lands. As Frankie tracks the ship's progress around the globe, he discovers that it is due to dock in his hometown. With the real HMS Accra arriving in only a fortnight, Lizzie must choose between telling Frankie the truth or finding the perfect stranger to play Frankie's father for just one day...
A brother and sister's battle over a prized heirloom piano unleashes haunting truths about how the past is perceived — and who defines a family legacy.
Newspaper magnate Charles Foster Kane is taken from his mother as a boy and made the ward of a rich industrialist. As a result, every well-meaning, tyrannical or self-destructive move he makes for the rest of his life appears in some way to be a reaction to that deeply wounding event.
A headstrong young girl in Afghanistan, ruled by the Taliban, disguises herself as a boy in order to provide for her family.
Charlie gets released from an insane asylum and moves in with Miranda, the young daughter he left behind. Charlie believes that there is treasure hidden beneath the local Costco, so he puts together a plan to unearth the loot. By convincing Miranda to quit her job at McDonald's and instead work at the wholesale store, he is able to obtain a key. Although Miranda is skeptical, she helps her father with his irrational quest.
As a group of cellmates continues to protect the daughter of their peer, they tackle a new challenge when authorities thwart her adoption by caretakers.
As an awkward idealistic high school teacher begins her first job in the city, things turn out to be much tougher than she had imagined.