Under the Pavement Lies the Strand

An actor and his wife have a tumultuous relationship. It ends in separation and a child custody battle.

A 20-something woman goes back to her hometown for the holidays for the first time in several years and is not only met with people from her past, but she's forced to deal with unresolved feelings too.

Lo (14) is living alone with her father at his farm. Bored and frustrated she's fantasizing about sexy boys, spying on the hot seasonal workers. Rune (45) is a single parent too busy making ends meet to be paying attention to his child becoming a young woman. When he catches her masturbating in her bedroom, he goes out of his mind thinking she's a victim of male sexuality. Daddy's Girl is about fear of losing and fear of not getting.

In 1948 the James Agee wrote a scenario for his lifelong hero, Charlie Chaplin. Deeply disturbed by the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Agee imagined New York destroyed. In the ruins, Chaplin's Little Tramp builds a shack in Central Park. Gradually a small community of the dispossessed grows up around him. For Agee, his story was a thought experiment about how one might start again in the aftermath of disaster, to go beyond capitalism and just how hard that is in the face of our modern technological world. The film focuses on his imaginative journey and what it might mean for us today.

Laura and Clemens spend their holidays at the sea in Northern Germany. Laura is bored and invents a game: She pretends to be blind. Over the course of a few days the couple gets entangled in their lie, revealing the emptiness of their relationship.

Hélène, a housekeeper at a ritzy hotel in Corsica, is devoted to her family but lacks any passion in her own life. When she sees a handsome couple play a passionate game of chess, she becomes inspired to play herself. Hélène's working-class husband and spoiled daughter are soon bewildered by her obsession with chess. They also grow suspicious of Hélène's close relationship with Dr. Kröger, her eccentric American expat tutor.

Irena, a postal delivery worker, is struggling with inadequate housing, a drunk neighbor who wants to take her place, and a heartless boss, knowing that the whole day at work, she is leaving her young son. But the worst is the loneliness, exacerbated by her single mother status. She meets a crippled pensioner Jacek, who appears to be the key to her happiness, but tragedy continues to strike.

When Jade, a web-cam girl, visits Takeko's tattoo studio she becomes entranced with the image of the spider lily and with Takeko as well. In order to get closer to the object of her desire, Jade asks Takeko to give her the same lily tattoo, challenging Takeko's monastic existence and opening up memories which threaten to tear the two women apart.

Amiko, a high school girl, adores Aomi to the point of nearly worshipping him. But one day, he runs away from home. Amiko's sometimes cynical, sometimes self-deprecating inner monologue goes off like vibrant stand-up comedy.

Christmas, family, and infidelity. Yvette's husband has died, and her grown daughters join her at the grave: Sonia, wealthy, bourgeois, and generous; Louba, living with their dad Stanislas, singing at a Russian restaurant, penniless, the mistress for the past 12 years of a man who will never leave his wife; Milla, the youngest, acerbic, lonesome. Christmas was when they learned their parents were divorcing 25 years ago. Over the next few days, yuletide depression, Louba's pregnancy, Sonia's crumbling marriage, Stanislas's overtures to Yvette, and Milla's attraction to the man who's her father's rent-free lodger lead each one to re-examine self, family, and hopes. Is renewal possible?

Masha is in an overwhelming relationship with Luuk, father of two and separated. Nothing seems to stand in their way until Luuk turns incurably ill, leaving Masha without status.

Seven junior-high-school girls organize a daycare camp for children while at the same time experiencing classic adolescent growing pains.