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.
An optimistic, talented teen clings to a huge secret: she's homeless and living on a school bus. When tragedy strikes, can she learn to accept a helping hand?
An odyssey through time and memory, centered on a place in New Jersey where—from wilderness, and then, later, from a home—love, loss, struggle, hope and legacy play out between couples and families over generations.
An uninterrupted rehearsal of Chekhov's 'Uncle Vanya' plays out by a company of actors. The setting: their run-down theater with an unusable stage and crumbling ceiling. The play is shown act by act with the briefest of breaks to move props or for refreshments. The lack of costumes, real props and scenery is soon forgotten.
A young priest, Father Chisholm is sent to China to establish a Catholic parish among the non-Christian Chinese. While his boyhood friend, also a priest, flourishes in his calling as a priest in a more Christian area of the world, Father Chisholm struggles. He encounters hostility, isolation, disease, poverty and a variety of set backs which humble him, but make him more determined than ever to succeed.
94-year-old Eleanor Morgenstein tries to rebuild her life after the death of her best friend. As a result, she moves back to New York City after living in Florida for decades.
A street smart runner develops an intense rivalry with an equally ambitious wealthy young athlete.
Stigmatized from infancy by the fate of his criminal father, a man is bruised and bullied until one night, in a fit of rage, he kills his most persistent tormentor. As the police close in around him, he makes a desperate bid for the love of the dead man’s fiancée, a schoolteacher who sees the wounded soul behind his aggression.
After a rapid engagement, a dowdy daughter of a chemist weds an industrialist, knowing little of his family or past. He transforms her into an elegant society wife, but becomes enraged whenever she asks about Michael, his mysterious long-lost brother.
The Sheffield family reveal and go through some home truths as their middle child inherits the Foxworth mansion. The family's ghosts looming over, and more tragedies are in store as the curse lives on.
When a rebellious teen embarks on a solo summer journey to connect with her roots, she finds herself in a new world, geared up for the ride of her life, and discovers she had the drive in her all along.
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.
Based on the real-life relationship between teammates Brian Piccolo and Gale Sayers and the bond established when Piccolo discovers that he is dying.
Back from a tour of duty, Kelli struggles to find her place in her family and the rust-belt town she no longer recognizes.
Marion is a woman who has learned to shield herself from her emotions. She rents an apartment to work undisturbed on her new book, but by some acoustic anomaly she can hear all that is said in the next apartment in which a psychiatrist holds his office. When she hears a young woman tell that she finds it harder and harder to bear her life, Marion starts to reflect on her own life. After a series of events she comes to understand how her unemotional attitude towards the people around her affected them and herself.
Andrew Crocker-Harris is an embittered and disliked teacher of Greek and Latin at a British prep school. After nearly 20 years of service, he is being forced to retire for 'health reasons', and perhaps may not even be given a pension. The boys regard him as a Hitler, with some justification. His unfaithful wife Laura tries to hurt him in any way she can. Andrew must come to terms with his failed life and at least regain his own self-esteem.
International art dealer Ron Hall must befriend a dangerous homeless man in order to save his struggling marriage to his wife, a woman whose dreams will lead all three of them on the journey of their lives.
At the end of WWII, Jimmy Picard, a Native American Blackfoot who fought in France, suffers from unexplainable symptoms and is admitted to a military hospital. When doctors suspect schizophrenia, an eccentric psychoanalyst takes up the case and starts a conversation with the veteran.
Jonathan is a young man with a strange condition that only his brother understands. But when he begins to yearn for a different life, their unique bond becomes increasingly tested.
An attorney defends a hoodlum of murder, using the oppressiveness of the slums to appeal to the court.
