How Brief

Feeling awkward and isolated, an imaginative and strong-willed teenage girl runs away from home with an older punk rock drifter.

In a suburban landscape, the lives of several families interlace with loss, despair and personal crisis. Esther Gold has lost focus on all but caring for her comatose son, Paul, and neglects her daughter and husband. Lawyer Jim Train is devoted to his career, not his family. Helen Christianson wants to find a new spark in life, while Annette Jennings tries to rebuild hers.

Kate has been absent from high school for a week due to a fractured foot. Upon returning, she discovers that her clique of friends has devised a new, secret plan codenamed "Lick the Star."

The story of a young writer's transformation when her past invades her present.

A psychotherapist helps a law student cope with schizophrenia in one of five interconnected tales dealing with mental illness.

A poor, struggling South Carolinian mother and daughter face painful choices with their resolve and pride. Bone, the eldest daughter, and Anney her tired mother, grow both closer and farther apart: Anney sees Glen as her last chance.

A woman embarks on a journey alone across the United States after fleeing from her violent husband.

The story of a middle-aged woman with small children whose life is shaken up when two free-spirited twenty-somethings move in across the street.

Zoë is a single mother who lives with her four children in Dartford. She is poor and can't afford to buy food. One day her old flame drives by and asks her to go on a date with him. Scared that he doesn't want to go out with her, she lies and tells him that she is just babysitting the kids. This will be her first date in years.

Years after her son's suicide, a woman longs to confront both the past and a friend of his who took his business idea.