"Why is it that it can be the simplest things in life that eliminate your self-worth."
The age-old battle between man and answering machine wages on as John attempts to record the perfect outgoing message.
Social & External
John Ashford
A young man receives an emergency phone call on his cell phone from an older woman. She claims to have been kidnapped – and the kidnappers have targeted her husband and child next.
A 911 dispatcher helps a lost and surprisingly upbeat woman in a compromising situation and connects with more than just the call.
Alan is a Seattle college student volunteering at a crisis center. One night when at the clinic alone, a woman calls up the number and tells Alan that she needs to talk to someone. She informs Alan she took a load of pills, and he secretly tries to get help. During this time, he learns more about the woman, her family life, and why she wants to die. Can Alan get the cavalry to save her in time before it's too late?
Romanian-French gigolo Georges Iscovescu wishes to enter the USA. Stopped in Mexico by the quota system, he decides to marry an American, then desert her and join his old partner Anita, who's done likewise. But after sweeping teacher Emmy Brown off her feet, he finds her so sweet that love and jealousy endanger his plans.
Hazem is distraught after his family secrets are made public when his mother decides to expose his late father's sexual affairs during his funeral rites.
When Andres and Natalia met by accident, she wasn't impressed. In time they gravitated toward each other. But Paulo, a troubling figure from Natalia's past felt otherwise.
A lonely woman's prank phone call leads to an unexpected friendship with a grieving widow.
A Man's Cat observes and witnesses his descent into madness at the end of his seasonal depression during the last days of winter.
Bruce is a telephone lineman who accidentally overhears a murder plot. When 911 informs him that there is nothing that they can do about it, he takes matters into his own hands, and gets entangled in a world of sex and mystery.
Two different but strangely complementary young women living together are pictured in a fragmented and non-linear narrative about incommunicability and alienation.
A person shaken by the catastrophes of the world cannot let go of their chaotic thoughts until they find a bond that was once lost.
A man travels to the coast from London for a meeting but is taken off the path after he meets Lily - someone very different from himself. The strangers spend the day together, slowly learning more about each other.
Jimmy Stevens, a senior VP at an international energy firm, blows the whistle on his company's deadly and corrupt practices in Latin America. Knowing he will be assassinated for his betrayal, he places an anonymous call securing the services of private detective Frank Turlotte to trail him from a distance.
An orphaned boy in a post-apocalyptic world, meets a grieving woman who is trying to find her lost daughter. Their journey leads them face-to-face with a despot who may have the daughter held captive.
Stifled Ania, trapped in a grimy grocery store, is suffocating under her mother’s toxic control. Salvation arrives via a discarded cauliflower that, unsettlingly, starts talking. At first a witty mentor, the vegetable’s advice soon sours into a grotesque push for revenge. As her rebellion escalates from petty pranks to radical acts, Ania must decide: is this edible oracle her savior or a deranged voice of self destruction? A darkly comic journey where freedom tastes like rot.
A Los Angeles film student struggles to graduate while navigating a budding romance and reconnecting with his estranged uncle, leading to a renewed uncertainty of his future.
Broken up with on the eve of a global lockdown, a man is pushed to the brink of madness by his isolation... only to discover he may not be as alone as he initially thought.
In New York City, a young girl is caught in the middle of her parents' bitter custody battle.
Heather is a shy lady who works in a helpline call centre. When she receives a phone call from a mystery man, she has no idea that the encounter will change her life forever.
A Pulitzer-winning writer grapples with being a widower and father after a mental breakdown, while, 27 years later, his grown daughter struggles to forge connections of her own.
Barbara and Oliver Rose live happily as a married couple. When Barbara starts to wonder what life would be like without Oliver and likes what she sees, the two begin a campaign to force each other to leave their house, with their divorce lawyer D'Amato caught in the middle.
Mabel Longhetti, desperate and lonely, is married to a Los Angeles municipal construction worker, Nick. Increasingly unstable, especially in the company of others, she craves happiness, but her extremely volatile behavior convinces Nick that she poses a danger to their family and decides to commit her to an institution for six months. Alone with a trio of kids to raise on his own, he awaits her return, which holds more than a few surprises.
A psychotherapist helps a law student cope with schizophrenia in one of five interconnected tales dealing with mental illness.
A successful advertising executive finds his freewheeling life crashing to a halt when his parents end their longtime marriage.
A jazz musician seeks refuge from a lynch mob on a remote island, where he meets a hostile game warden and the young object of his attentions.
An odyssey through time and memory, centered on a place in New Jersey where—from wilderness, and then, later, from a home—love, loss, struggle, hope and legacy play out between couples and families over generations.
A burned-out paramedic tries to survive his last 24 hours on the job while training a new recruit.
On the French island of Mont Saint-Michel, Jack, a failed presidential candidate, Tom, his speechwriter turned poet and Sonia, a physicist, engage in an intellectual conversation about politics, philosophy and life over the course of a single day.
Captures a generational moment - young people on the cusp of truly growing up, tiring of their reflexive cynicism, each in their own ways struggling to connect and define what it means to love and be loved. Six New Yorkers juggle love, friendship, and the keenly challenging specter of adulthood. Sam Wexler is a struggling writer who's having a particularly bad day. When a young boy gets separated from his family on the subway, Sam makes the questionable decision to bring the child back to his apartment and thus begins a rewarding, yet complicated, friendship. Sam's life revolves around his friends — Annie, whose self-image keeps her from commitment; Charlie and Mary Catherine, a couple whose possible move to Los Angeles tests their relationship; and Mississippi, a cabaret singer who catches Sam's eye.
After her stay-at-home husband leaves her, a workaholic lawyer finds that she is not completely up to the tasks of caring for her young son, ailing father and household all by herself.
Fresh out of law school and desperate for work, idealistic rookie Rudy Baylor takes on a powerful insurance company accused of denying a dying boy’s claim. Teaming up with a scrappy, unlicensed paralegal, he finds himself in a David-versus-Goliath courtroom battle that tests his ethics, courage, and belief in justice.
A demoted police officer assigned to a call dispatch desk is conflicted when he receives an emergency phone call from a kidnapped woman.
Craig, a young boy living in a small town befriends an older, reclusive billionaire, Mr. Harrigan. The two form a bond over books and an iPhone, but when the man passes away the boy discovers that not everything dead is gone.
With John's social life at a standstill and his ex-wife about to get remarried, a down on his luck divorcée finally meets the woman of his dreams, only to discover she has another man in her life - her son. Before long, the two are locked in a battle of wits for the woman they both love-and it appears only one man can be left standing when it's over.
Based on the true story of First Sergeant Charles Monroe King, a soldier deployed to Iraq begins to keep a journal of love and advice for his infant son. Back at home, senior New York Times editor Dana Canedy revisits the story of her unlikely, life-altering relationship with King and his enduring devotion to her and their child.
Still reeling from a heartbreaking family event and his parents' subsequent divorce, Tyler Hawkins discovers a fresh lease on life when he meets Ally Craig, a gregarious beauty who witnessed her mother's death. But as the couple draws closer, the fallout from their separate tragedies jeopardizes their love.
Charlie Lang is a simple, kindhearted New York City cop. When he realizes he has no money to tip waitress Yvonne Biasi, Lang offers her half the winnings of his lottery ticket. Amazingly, the ticket happens to be a winner, in the sum of $4 million. True to his word, Lang proceeds to share the prize money with Biasi, which infuriates his greedy wife, Muriel. Not content with the arrangement, Muriel begins scheming to take all the money.