A 5-year-old boy with a unique way of seeing the world feels alienated from his mother and tells her that he does not need her anymore. This viewpoint later causes him to lash out at his family, leading him to reflect on himself and his life.

After a young Jewish boy moves to Berlin with his family, he learns that his family agreed to watch a boy from the mental institution on the weekends. The two become friends, and the boy learns more about himself through meeting the other boy.

A young girl works to impress her highly critical parents and submits to a terrible fate as she struggles to meet their impossible standards.

A five year old child to a new home in a sandy region near miners and must navigate the seemingly random changes and curious characters she meets along the way.

A little girl navigates her relationships with two boys in her elementary school class, a brash bully and a shy victim, and learns about the nature of suffering.

After their mother leaves a preteen and her siblings, the preteen must navigate her emerging adolescence by herself in an orphanage.

On the eve of her students' elementary school graduation, a teacher in rural Ireland makes one last push to prepare her students for the real world.

An afternoon at the park takes an unexpected turn for a mother and her son as the well-established families that they admire turn out to be unhappy people who secretly enjoy the misery of others. As the day progresses, the mother is surprised to learn that she and her son share many negative qualities with those families.

A girl going through puberty hopelessly tries to hold onto childhood during a day at the beach, but meddling mothers push her to grow up.

A four-year-old boy who lives in Denmark is abandoned by his mother and sent to live with his aunt and very sick uncle, where he must endure the loss of yet another parental figure.