A Canadian schoolteacher sets up shop on a tiny, near-barren island off the coast of Labrador. Before long, what begins as a peaceful new life full of love and community becomes a cold, icy prison.

On his thirteenth birthday, a boy on the edge of puberty climbs the high dive at the public pool for the first time. At the top, he feels as if he can stop time and see the entire world laid out before him — but eventually he must jump.

An aimless, twenty-two-year-old Californian man questions everything—from his job to his ability to take care of a potted plant—as a heat wave sweeps his town. Just when he's about to spiral, a life-changing act of heroism gives him unexpected clarity.

As a strictly sexual affair stretches past its expiration date, a woman and her taken lover struggle to define their burgeoning feelings for each other.

A child observes their father’s strange obsession with dressing up the pole in their front yard as they grow up.

In 1960s France, the U.S. ambassador and his wife travel to visit their newly remarried son in a remote village. He lashes out at his family, and begins to understand his failures as a parent and their effects on those whom he loves.

A young man from an old, powerful southern family grows up hunting a legendary bear only to grapple with his relationship with nature and his family legacy.

A poor but noble-blooded Chinese man seeks glory by inadvertently joining the English war effort in WWI. He works as a trench-digger, but his ambition leads him to take up arms during a battle, inspiring his fellow trench-diggers to fight with him.

A young man wins a feral cat from a mysterious stranger at a bar one night and finds his life turned upside-down as he then struggles to care for the cat, overcome his personal insecurities, and love the woman he wants to be with.

In a missive to his ex-girlfriend, a wistful man remembers the impact of one horrifying night on their sex life and relationship.