In 1988 Germany, a teenaged girl likes to probe her uptight family members for the rich stories they carry from their past. When her aunt—the black sheep of the family—comes to stay with them, the girl is fascinated by her free-spirited persona and the family secrets she may hold.

As an old woman revisits her family's quintessentially American history, she finds a way to respect and love her parents, despite the scandals and tragedies they endured.

In the 1960s, a old woman, her son, and her daughter-in-law host guests for Sunday lunch. The woman thinks she has kept the nuclear shelter beneath the house secret from her son, with whom she has a strained relationship. However, her son knows and has installed a back way in, such that he can surprise her there after she locks herself inside.

When a friendly resident at a retirement home starts to decline in health and popularity, a woman reflects on what it means to grow old when there’s no one to look out for you.

A man plays bridge on his night off with a few distant friends. Their conversation inspires a tipsy, failed attempt to steal from a drugstore. In this 20th century jail, his excitement turns to anger and doom as he reflects on his crumbling marriage, kids, and childhood.

In a 1960s American suburb, a father promises his three girls a family vacation for Christmas. As they find out months later, however, they won't be going to Disneyland—instead, they'll be spending two weeks in the bomb shelter beneath their backyard.

A couple attends the show of a marvelous, sensuous, and regal African American singer in Paris. The wife of the couple finds herself struggling for a grip as the pleasure of seeing this performer infiltrates her fortress of restraint.

In the quarantine stage of the 2020 pandemic, a woman and her husband reflect on their marriage, how time has somehow conflated, making them, at once, who they are now and who they used to be.

In Baltimore in the late 1800s, a child named Benjamin Button is born with the appearance and demeanor of a 70-year-old man. As time progresses, Benjamin ages backward, moving from elderly fragility to youthful exuberance, challenging the natural course of life.

In the 1950s, two white couples go on a hunting trip near Dallas; when the husbands leave their wives at the ranch for a few days, one of the wives tries to visit her lover but struggles to break free from her violent husband's grasp.