Blow for Blow

At New Mexico's Empire Zinc mine, Mexican-American workers protest the unsafe work conditions and unequal wages compared to their Anglo counterparts. Ramon Quintero helps organize the strike, but he is shown to be a hypocrite by treating his pregnant wife, Esperanza, with a similar unfairness. When an injunction stops the men from protesting, however, the gender roles are reversed, and women find themselves on the picket lines while the men stay at home.

Julie finally gets an interview for a job where she can raise her children better only to run into a national transit strike.

In near-future New York, ten years after the “social-democratic war of liberation,” diverse groups of women organize a feminist uprising as equality remains unfulfilled.

After promising 1100 employees that they would protect their jobs, the managers of a factory decide to suddenly close up shop. Laurent takes the lead in a fight against this decision.

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.

Jo, the mother of seven children, divorces her second husband in order to marry Jake, a successful but promiscuous screenwriter. Though they are physically and emotionally compatible, they are slowly torn apart.

One summer, a French teenager who has been living with his mother in the city moves in with his estranged father’s family in the countryside, where he clashes with his stepmother.

A few months after May '68, Robert, a graduate of the Ecole Normale Supérieure and a far-left activist, decides to get a job at Citroën as a line worker. Like other comrades, he wants to infiltrate the factory to rekindle the revolutionary fire, but the majority of workers no longer want to hear about politics. When Citroën decides to pay back the Grenelle Agreements by requiring workers to work 3 hours overtime per week for free, Robert and some others see the possibility of a social movement.

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

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.