Etta Cox

The youngest son of an alcoholic former boxer returns home, where he's trained by his father for competition in a mixed martial arts tournament – a path that puts the fighter on a collision course with his estranged, older brother.

Life seems perfect for John Brennan until his wife, Lara, is arrested for a murder she says she didn’t commit. Three years into her sentence, John is struggling to hold his family together, raising their son and teaching at college while he pursues every means available to prove her innocence. With the rejection of their final appeal, Lara becomes suicidal and John decides there is only one possible, bearable solution: to break his wife out of prison.

Greg is coasting through senior year of high school as anonymously as possible, avoiding social interactions like the plague while secretly making spirited, bizarre films with Earl, his only friend. But both his anonymity and friendship threaten to unravel when his mother forces him to befriend a classmate with leukemia.

The story of three Pittsburgh widows who meet every year to visit their husband's graves and talk about perspectives in their lives.

The marriage of a young working-class woman is jeopardized when she witnesses her brother-in-law's participation in a gang rape of an intoxicated woman in a neighborhood bar.

A knife-scarred victim must identify her assailant beyond a reasonable doubt. Meanwhile the accused is offered a deal if he pleads guilty. Is he as innocent as the victim? Is the justice system guiltier than both?

Martha "Red" Tierney used to be a hot-shot reporter, but that was before alcohol took over her life. One morning Martha's son, Jonathan, leaves for school, stopping first to meet his father for breakfast. But Jonathan never meets his dad. Instead, he is picked up by Lawrence, a pedophile who has been watching him. Now Martha must overcome her alcoholism and her bitterness towards her ex-husband and use her old investigative skills to find her son before it's too late.

Complex, introspective children in low-income neighborhoods of New York City tell their stories.