Keep the Aspidistra Flying

India. Smita is an untouchable. She dreams of seeing her daughter escape her miserable condition and enter school. Italy. Giulia works in her father’s workshop. When he has an accident, she discovers that the family business is ruined. Canada. Sarah, a successful lawyer, is about to be promoted to the head of her firm when she learns that she is ill. Three lives, three women, three continents. Three battles to fight. Although they don’t know each other, Smita, Giulia and Sarah are unknowingly linked by their most intimate and singular bond.

A young refugee travels from Russia to America in search of her lost father and falls in love with a gypsy horseman.

Set in Isaan, this is the story of a mother who struggles to lead her needy family through seemingly endless hardships and pressures. To help the family survive, the father endures greedy capitalists who heartlessly take advantage of him and his family, forcing him to slave at the harvest of an infertile field. That is until he loses both his arms. Then all the burdens fall on the mother: bread-winning, taking care of her crippled husband and raising the kids, all amid external pressures from drought to vile businessmen.

Portrait of the last days of the life of Portuguese writer Camilo Castelo Branco.

The Vietnamese Nghi has a bad feeling as she sees the foreign Chinese groom for the first time on the day of her daughter’s wedding. Nghi and Phuong decided that the 17 years old should get married to relieve the family of their debts. But then, the bride disappears after the ceremony and the mother faces the decision what she is ready to give for her family's happiness.

Shopping malls - today's place of creating desires. Best jewelry, clothes, shoes. Unaffordable by young girls, but they "work" to get themselves sponsors for new items.

A successful, young writer's first pregnancy is overshadowed by her complicated relationship with reality.

Unscrupulous boxing promoters, violent bookmakers, a Russian gangster, incompetent amateur robbers and supposedly Jewish jewelers fight to track down a priceless stolen diamond.

Anne doesn't have enough money to take her daughter, Mélody, away from the small provincial town where they live for a few days during the summer holidays. In the face of her daughter's disappointment and incomprehension, she does all she can to find the money.

Set in the early 1990’s, a critical period in Malaysian Indian history, the story subtly underlines the plight of the Indian Malaysians. Forsaken by the estate owners who had employed them for generations and systematically marginalized, they are forced to move to the cities and survive under harsh circumstances. Left out of the nation’s urbanization and development plans, many live in squatters and work at minimum wage jobs…

The lives of several individuals in the city criss-cross, thanks to children, who offer them a chance at redemption.