Zurich

After a lengthy deployment abroad in Afghanistan, young soldier David Kleinschmidt returns to his home village in the southern Black Forest ahead of schedule. He is warmly welcomed by his girlfriend Kirsten and his mother Inge. His eight-year-old half-brother Benni is full of admiration for him. But David has changed. He is withdrawn and no longer the person he was before his deployment.

In a beauty salon in Beirut the lives of five women cross paths. The beauty salon is a colorful and sensual microcosm where they share and entrust their hopes, fears and expectations.

Rebecca, an American who has been living in Jerusalem for a few months now, has just broken off her engagement. She gets into a cab driven by Hanna, an Israeli. But Hanna is on her way to Jordan, to the Free Zone, to pick up a large sum of money.

Thirteen-year-old Paula lives with her mother on a well-kept estate in a small town surrounded by nice neighbours. But Paula's view of normality has been sharpened by her extensive and consistent diet of horror movies.

It's 1947 and the borderlines between India and Pakistan are being drawn. A young girl bears witnesses to tragedy as her ayah is caught between the love of two men and the rising tide of political and religious violence.

The year is 1938, and Mahatma Gandhi's groundbreaking philosophies are sweeping across India, but 8-year-old Chuyia, newly widowed, must go to live with other outcast widows on an ashram. Her presence transforms the ashram as she befriends two of her compatriots.

A thirty-something southern woman searches for love, despite the burdens she carries with her.

Young engineer Doru is called to the Prosecutor's Office and questioned on his wife's unlawful ways of making money. Soon he'll learn about her true character and he'll regret having broken up with Livia, a woman who truly loved him.

A woman hunts for fossils and makes a big discovery. But she doesn't get credit again.

Set in the frozen steppes of Mongolia, a young nomad is confronted with his destiny after animals fall victim to a plague which threatens to eradicate nomadism.

Facing eviction, the residents of a bohemian quarter of Portland, Oregon organize to collectively purchase a block of houses, only to get a crash course in bureaucracy.

The dull daily routine of an insurance agent, who listlessly drives down the highway every day and conducts customer meetings while longing for his family, becomes a metaphor for a life that has come to a standstill and is threatened with being crushed by loneliness.

Although barely 30, Claire believes she is showing the first symptoms of Alzheimer's disease, a condition from which her mother has recently died. Her sister, Nathalie, is certain that her memory loss, caused by a lightning strike, is temporary. In the clinic where she is being treated, Claire is attracted to Philippe, a man who is still traumatized after a car accident in which his wife and child were both killed. In spite of their personal tragedies, Claire and Philippe fall in love. When Philippe recovers, Claire moves into his home. Then Claire's condition takes a turn for the worse.

In 1942, the young Jewish girl Misha, her Russian mother Gerusha and her German father Reuven hide from the Germans in a small house in Ardennes, Belgium. Misha is very connected to her mother that advises her that if one day a person comes to her saying "love of my life", she would follow him or her without any question. When her parents are captured by the Nazis, Misha is delivered to a German family and the abusive matriarch gives a bad treatment to the girl. However, she finds support in the family of Ernest and his deranged wife Marthe that supplies groceries to foster family. Misha loves Ernest's dogs and the old man gives a compass to her and tells that her parents have been sent to East to forced labor. When the old couple is denounced for sheltering the girl and arrested by the Germans, Misha flees through the woods heading east. Along her journey seeking out her parents...

A sister and brother face the realities of familial responsibility as they begin to care for their ailing father.