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.
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A young black man named Bigger Thomas takes a job working for a highly influential Chicago family, a decision that will change the course of his life forever.
Yang Mengchi is a spoiled, rich do-nothing whose habit of smoking opium has cost him his entire fortune and the family mansion, the Garden of Repose, now due to be sold to Yao Guodong. Fearing that Yao's spoiled and unruly son Siaofu will follow in Yang's footsteps, Yao's stepwife Wan Zhaohua tries to instil discipline in the child but her efforts are undermined by the child's indulging and protective father and grandmother. Unable to reform himself despite his own son's chastisement, Yang leaves home to lead a reclusive life in a destitute temple, only helped out by his filial daughter Han'er. The poverty-stricken Yang is drafted into the army and tragedy ensues.
Can there be a bleaker portrait of a life half-lived? Cinematic treatment of poet R.S. Thomas's story of Twm, the "shy soul" who lives and dies alone in the "grim house nailed to the mountainside", oblivious to the interest shown in him by young girls in the village and to his own isolation as he scratches a living from the farm.
Struggling against the harsh realities of poverty, a devoted father, Mike reluctantly turns to burglary to provide for his daughter. The narrative unfolds through the varied viewpoints of those touched by his actions.
Carmine is a thirteen-year-old boy who is forced to work with his father, spending his adolescence torn between desires and loves. One day, he meets a girl, and in his eagerness to get noticed by her, he makes a mistake that will cost him dearly.
Coin is not about chasing wealth. It is about what happens when people are pushed so far down that they stop reaching altogether and only fight to keep what little remains. In a system where value circulates freely but dignity does not, innocence becomes the last uncontaminated force capable of interrupting the cycle.
After running away from his negligent parents, committing a violent crime and being sentenced to five years in jail, a hardened, streetwise 12-year-old Lebanese boy sues his parents in protest of the life they have given him.
The story of two homeless brothers and their ambitious dreams of becoming race car drivers. Amidst a harsh reality where they are invisible to society, they embark on a journey of personal development that tests the strength of their love for their dreams, challenging what the world expects of them and showcasing the love of hope and unity.
A widow and her two sons, Seitaro and Koji, live in the small town of Komori, where Buraku people are forced to reside. The two boys are continuously harassed by their teachers and classmates through their childhood as a result of their Buraku heritage. In the midst of the 1918 Great Rice Riots in Osaka, Seitaro meets with Asako, the daughter of a rice shop owner, and falls in love with her. She too is of Buraku descent. At the same period, Hideaki, an old friend of the brothers returns to Komori, and he along with Koji and the townspeople create "Zenkoku Suiheisha", the National Levelers Association, an organization pledged to build a bridge over the river of discrimination, making all people equal in every way.
A big-city female doctor returns to her roots in the backwoods of the Blue Ridge Mountains to bring modern medicine to the local folks in the Appalachia of the 1930s and finds herself at odds with the homespun ways of the resident medicine woman.
Curse of the Starving Class is a play by Sam Shepard, considered the first of a series on family tragedies. Drama about a dirt-poor 1950's-era farm family. Dad's a foul talking drunk and Mom is desperately trying to save what's left of their family life.
An Air Force washout and his buddy room with a pretty young lady. Desperate for jobs during the Depression, they finally land employment with the mob.
Sometimes it feels like we live in different worlds. But really, we're not that far away.
A mother struggles to make a better life for her daughter.
Rodrigo and his friends, restless teenagers from the marginalized neighborhoods on the hillsides of Medellín, spend their time causing trouble. But Rodrigo dreams of playing rock music and brings his friends together to form a punk band that becomes a lifeline amid a web of disorientation, violence, drugs, and fear.
Professor Griggs, teaching at the college, doesn't get paid a living wage; his next door neighbor, successful shoemaker Olsen, has money and plentiful food, while the Griggses have hardly any. When the professor's rich student Phil West falls for beautiful Griggs daughter Amelia and also befriends the poor Reverend Gates (a young man who is also in love with Amelia), he observes the difference in his life and theirs and tries to help make a difference.
After the closure of a coal mine leaves her husband unemployed, Fumiko travels from Kyushu to Kyoto with her daughter Kimiko, and they become hostesses at a cabaret.
The country is occupied by the Japanese imperialists. Koppun is selling flowers at the market to get some money to buy medicine for her sick mother. Her brother is imprisoned, her father dead and her sister blind.
Sisters moving from Hunan to Hong Kong in the 1990s are faced with an identity crisis, poverty, and their father's drug addiction.
Celina works at a remote tollbooth on a desert road, few days before Christmas, her father dies and Celina becomes a door-to-door encyclopedia saleswoman so she can earn enough money to travel to Italy and find her mom.
Gentle and broken, a homeless man fights others on video for money but soon finds comfort in an unlikely friend and the lost diary of a young girl.
Evangelist Carlton Pearson is ostracized by his church for preaching that there is no Hell.
Drama telling the story of Blue, a young man of Jamaican descent living in Brixton in 1980, as he hangs out with his friends, fronts a dub sound system, loses his job, struggles with family problems and has his friendships tested by racism.
A young man with a bright future suffers a near-fatal accident and recreates his new life with the help of an unlikely animal friend.
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?
Monica is 13 years old and has already created her own world, on the street, where she fights courageously to defend what little she has: her friends, her boyfriend, who sells drugs, and her dignity and pride that makes no concessions to anyone. On Christmas night, like every night, she sells roses to make a living. But life brings her a new appointment with loneliness, poverty, drugs and death.
After having a nearly fatal drug overdose, 19-year-old Argentine Martin is sent to Madrid, where his film director father lives with his new, younger lover, Alicia, and his bisexual actor friend, Dante.
Left on the doorstep of a monastery as an infant, Marcelino was raised by the monks. He was well-cared for but lonely and missed having a mother. One day he found a special friend in the forbidden attic, hanging on a cross. A friend that would repay Marcelino's kindness by granting him one heart-felt wish.
Tells the parallel stories of nine-year-old Carlitos and his mother, Rosario. In the hopes of providing a better life for her son, Rosario works illegally in the U.S. while her mother cares for Carlitos back in Mexico.
A hard-living salesman becomes a quadriplegic after an accident.
Recently escaped from reformatory, Reinaldo struggles to get by in the streets of Havana in the late 90s, one of the worst decades for Cuban society. Hopes, disillusionment, rum, good humor and above all hunger, accompany him in his wanderings, until he meets Magda and Yunisleidy, survivors like himself. In one or the other's arms, he will try to escape the material and moral misery surrounding him, living love, passion, tenderness and uninhibited sex to the limit.
A woman who works in a meat packing plant is continuously preyed upon by lecherous men.
Tom and Mae Garvey are a Tennessee farming couple battling violent floods to save their land. In addition to natural disasters, the Garveys fight to stop a selfish land developer and a local corporation from foreclosing on their farm. While Mae stays at home to care for their children and tend to the crops, Tom finds work as a scab at a steel mill to preserve his family's property.
Russ Millings has just been released from prison after serving 21 years for a 3rd strike conviction for possessing an ounce of marijuana. As he tries to adapt to a world he doesn’t recognize – including trying to learn how to use the internet – he finds an abandoned baby in a dumpster behind the fast food restaurant where he works as a dishwasher. Unsure of what to do, and caught between impulses of kindness and panic, Russ soon realizes this could be his chance at redemption.
When seventeen-year-old Hannah stumbles upon a website about Thinspiration--an online community devoted to anorexia as a life choice--she becomes an obsessive follower of the site founder, ButterflyAna. By the time Hannah's family realizes what is happening and get Hannah the help she needs, the disease has fully taken hold and Hannah is refusing to eat. Will this family be able to exorcise the demon of anorexia from their lives?
Carla Zachanassian had a child by Serge Miller as a teenager. When Serge refused to marry her, she was driven out of town. By her own wit and cunning, she has returned as a multi-millionaire for a visit. The town lays out the red carpet expecting big things from Carla, only to learn that her sole purpose is to see Serge Miller killed...
A young Indigenous game warden arrests an infamous poacher only to discover that the poacher knows the location of a plane carrying millions of dollars that has crashed in a frozen lake. When a group of criminals and dirty cops are alerted to the poacher’s whereabouts, the warden and the poacher team up to fight back and escape across the treacherous lake before the ice melts.
When young dad, Joe, discovers he's dying, drifter Charlie is given a unique opportunity to turn his life around. A story of family, identity and starting again.
Ana and her two best friends, Maria and Paula, navigate life in their oppressive countryside village. Whilst their families struggle in the poppy fields harvesting opium, the girls try to grow alongside the creeping terror of their cartel oppressors.
Chimo turns 18 years and comes from a humble and supportive family. Since childhood he was bullied and even today, while working multiple jobs and dreaming of starting his own business, he continues to face his bully: El Rubio. When Chimo has the opportunity for revenge, he never imagines what begins as an act of retaliation could turn into an unexpected friendship that'll change both their lives.