A group of working class people run a dangerous path toward a promised Elysium, and those who survive are rewarded with nothing they can appreciate or comprehend.

A mother struggles to provide her daughter with comfort in an unstable home as her husband constantly searches for new employment.

A married couple tries to make ends meet for their hungry and sick children in the midst of the Depression but soon realize that sheer willpower cannot save them from the ruthless winter.

A Black mother enlists rootworkers to dole out revenge on a White woman whose merciless actions during the Great Depression caused her children to starve.

After yet another hurricane, a Puerto Rican family reflects how they hide their struggles from their Americanized relatives.

When a young man leaves his home in Kansas City to find a career, he struggles to settle down in one spot. He wanders, impoverished, across the western United States and finds a transcendent understanding of the human condition.

When an impoverished man shows up to a wealthy woman's door in dire need of help, she gives him ten dollars and tries to send him on his way. The man insists that he return the next day to thank her husband for the money, but she isn't quite sure if things are as they seem.

After being laid off from his job, a man struggles to find meaning in a utopian world where all of his basic needs are already met for him.

Two worlds collide at an upper-class event, where a man working for a charity grovels for donations, and a millionaire French aristocrat looks for a cause that will make her seem altruistic.

When he discovers gold near his village, an African man dissatisfied with his lot in life develops new obsessions, flouts old responsibilities, and ultimately loses more than he gains.