In a small North German village a drama played out during and shortly after the Second World War about duty versus individual conscience and morality.
Jo, the mother of seven children, divorces her second husband in order to marry Jake, a successful but promiscuous screenwriter. Though they are physically and emotionally compatible, they are slowly torn apart.
Painting is an unacceptable vocation for a woman in provincial Germany in the year 1900, but budding artist Paula Becker is determined to make her own rules.
Middle-aged widow Beatrice Hunsdorfer and her daughters Ruth and Matilda are struggling to survive in a society they barely understand. Beatrice dreams of opening an elegant tea room but does not have the wherewithal to achieve her lofty goal. Epileptic Ruth is a rebellious adolescent, while shy but highly intelligent and idealistic Matilda seeks solace in her pets and school projects, including one designed to show how small amounts of radium affect marigolds.
Jamie Fitzpatrick and Nona Alberts are two women from opposites sides of the social and economic track, but they have one thing in common: a mission to fix their community's broken school and ensure a bright future for their children. The two women refuse to let any obstacles stand in their way as they battle a bureaucracy that's hopelessly mired in traditional thinking, and they seek to re-energize a faculty that has lost its passion for teaching.
A man living in the towering shadow of his aging father finds it difficult to start a new chapter in his life by marrying his girlfriend and moving to California.
As Islamic morality squads stage arbitrary raids in Tehran and as fundamentalists seize hold of the universities, Azar Nafisi, an inspired teacher, secretly gathers six of her most committed female students to read forbidden western classics. Unaccustomed to being asked to speak their minds, they soon removed their veils, their stories intertwining with the novels they read: just like the heroines of Nabokov, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry James or Jane Austen, the women in Nafisi’s living room dare to dream, hope and love as we experience the complexity of the lives of individuals facing political, moral and personal siege.
Since Ben has been living apart from his ex-wife Mira and his children, his life has fallen apart. But unexpectedly, he gets a second chance: when Mira, pregnant to the teeth, has to be hospitalized, his children live with him again. This time, everything will be fine - he thinks! But his son Oskar brings a small problem: he wears a dress that he doesn't want to take off.
Evangelist Carlton Pearson is ostracized by his church for preaching that there is no Hell.
A woman embarks on a journey alone across the United States after fleeing from her violent husband.
A Yenish boy is placed in a mental hospital and experiences the Nazi euthanasia program. Aware of what was happening and attached to friends, the lad attempts to sabotage the program. The film addresses the complexities of the program director, the lives of the child victims, and the struggles of the child protagonist. More than five thousand children died in the Nazi euthanasia program.
A pro ball player with a substance abuse problem is forced into rehab in his hometown, finding new hope when he gets honest about his checkered past, and takes on coaching duties for a misfit Little League team
Thomas Montgomery, a married father of two young daughters, gets seduced by the world of online gambling and chat rooms where a virtual romance and sexual obsession ultimately leads to the murder of an innocent man.
When one of her students is suspected of theft, teacher Carla Nowak decides to get to the bottom of the matter. Caught between her ideals and the school system, the consequences of her actions threaten to break her.
The story of a young writer's transformation when her past invades her present.
A logger leads a life of quiet grace as he experiences love and loss during an era of monumental change in early 20th-century America.
A man reflects on the lost love of his youth and his long-ago journey from Taiwan to America as he begins to reconnect with his estranged daughter.
In New York City, a young girl is caught in the middle of her parents' bitter custody battle.
When high school sweethearts John and Kathy find out Kathy is pregnant, they decide to get married and move to Cambridge so John can fulfill his scholarship to Harvard. But faced with the harsh reality of their situation, Kathy leaves John behind, compelling him to rent a room from Dorothy, a psychic who encourages him as he struggles to balance school and fatherhood.
Alone in her empty flat, from her window Anne observes the people passing by who nervously snatch up the personal belongings and pieces of furniture she has put out on the pavement. Her final gesture of taking a ring off her finger signals she is leaving her previous life in Holland behind. She goes to Ireland, where she chooses to lead a solitary, wandering existence, striding through the austere landscapes of Connemara. During her travels, she discovers a house that is home to a hermit, Martin.
