A boy living in an abandoned cinema meets a young girl. As their friendship develops, the boy entertains the other cinema residents with stories and shadow puppets.
Françoise Barnier, the film's heroine, is a mother. One day, she stole something. She was in dire straits but no more so than usual. She was not in debt. She had always refused the degradation of excessive debt and charities, attempting to live in line with the rules laid down by society and the law. We follow her journey through the judicial institution. Here, two ideas of justice and law collide.
A humble family receives a real Greek gift: a luxury car, which cannot be sold for two years. To make matters worse, no one knows how to drive. Time passes, and the automobile ends up having quite unusual uses.
"Baba" is a bitter melodrama set in Istambul. A father is not able to earn enough money to feed his family. He is waiting to emigrate to Germany. When his landlord's son kills a man while drunk, the father is prepared to answer for the deed himself, provided that the landlord supports his wife and children. As there is little difference for the father between ten years in prison or ten years in a foreign country, he regards this to be the best solution.
A story about life adversities of an old emigrant who returns from America to his native village.
A near-penniless drifter's journey to Alaska in search of work is interrupted when she loses her dog while attempting to shoplift food for it.
Young widow Li Jingqin is struggling to put her son Du Shaoxiong through school with her meagre income. Bullied by the landlady, Du spends his days wandering the streets where he is lured by a gang to commit crimes. Fortunately, Du has a heart of gold.
A headstrong young girl in Afghanistan, ruled by the Taliban, disguises herself as a boy in order to provide for her family.
Young, impulsive Rosetta lives a hard and stressful life as she struggles to support herself and her alcoholic mother. Refusing all charity, she is desperate to maintain a dignified job.
A man tries to raise his two sons and two daughters under some of the most adverse conditions known to man. The father operates a horse-drawn cart, but in a city that is modernizing after the destruction of the Korean War, automobiles are making carts obsolete. The children are experiencing difficulties as well. The eldest son has flunked the bar exam twice and is not hopeful of passing it a third time to become a lawyer. The eldest daughter is mute and married to an abusive husband. The younger daughter tries to pose as a rich university student to move up in life. The youngest son has a penchant for petty theft.
Bill is a penniless drifter who scams strangers out of just enough money to feed himself and his partner in crime, an orphan girl known as Curly Sue. Bill and Curly Sue target Grey, a yuppie lawyer, but their con takes an unexpected turn when the successful woman begins to like the ramshackle duo. But there's one problem—Grey's jealous, conniving boyfriend, Walker.
In the late 19th century, two Swedish emigrants, Lasse Karlsson and his son Pelle, arrive on the Danish island of Bornholm hoping to find work on a farm and save enough money to travel to the United States of America.
Simple Italian postman learns to love poetry while delivering mail to a famous poet; he uses this to woo local beauty Beatrice.
An Irish Catholic family returns to 1930s Limerick after a child's death in America. The unemployed I.R.A. veteran father struggles with poverty, prejudice, and alcoholism as the family endures harsh slum conditions.
Yeong-shin and Dong-hyuk graduate from college with a cause. They plan to bring education and modernization to farmers living in the rural area of their hometown. When they arrive, the pair immediately get to work, Dong-hyuk builds a village hall and starts aiding the farmers while Yeong-shin tries to gather the children to form a school. However, the villagers at first resent and resist the pair. It is not until one child, Ok-bun, takes the initiative and and learns to read under Yeong-shin’s care that the villages trust the pair and allow their children to be taken from the fields and taught reading, writing and math.
Jimmy Gralton returns from New York and reopens his beloved community hall, only to meet opposition from the local parish.
A look at the lives of migratory farm workers, focusing on one family.
When a worker is found murdered on the construction side, the investigation swiftly turns from things criminal to the political circumstances surrounding the building itself. Widespread corruption and neglect by the builder himself are seen to have brought the situation about. Much of the movie is filmed using hand-held cameras, and the majority of the dialogue is in the difficult-to-understand and very slangy Spanish dialect of Mexico City's bricklayers.
In a sprawling city, a man's firm belief that people are innately selfless is severely tested.