When housewife Trina wins the lottery, her comfortable life with her dentist husband John slowly deteriorates, in part by her own increasing paranoia and partly by the machinations of villainous acquaintance Marcus.

After a head injury, cowardly newspaper cartoonist Sathya hears a voice in his mind, foretells events and puts him in precarious situations and forces him to take on a corrupt politician.

A working class teenager comes of age in 1910s rural Sweden, moving through a series of jobs and romances that gradually shape his future.

After the death of his mother, Raúl is forced to look for his father to solve a legal problem with a property, he finds him in a distant town married to a young woman and after 20 years without seeing him they begin a conflictive and longing relationship.

Left penniless by her vengeful ex-husband, Madeline is forced to become a pickpocket to pay for a new wardrobe. One of her victims is a Mr. Finlay, who threatens to turn her over to the police -- until he hears Madeline's woeful tale of her cruel, possessive husband.

India. Smita is an untouchable. She dreams of seeing her daughter escape her miserable condition and enter school. Italy. Giulia works in her father’s workshop. When he has an accident, she discovers that the family business is ruined. Canada. Sarah, a successful lawyer, is about to be promoted to the head of her firm when she learns that she is ill. Three lives, three women, three continents. Three battles to fight. Although they don’t know each other, Smita, Giulia and Sarah are unknowingly linked by their most intimate and singular bond.

In 1847, when Ireland is in the grip of the Great Famine that has ravaged the country for two long years, Feeney, a hardened Irish Ranger who has been fighting for the British Army abroad, returns home to reunite with his estranged family, only to discover the cruelest reality, a black land where death reigns.

A boy, obsessed with comparing himself with those less fortunate, experiences a different life at the home of his aunt and uncle in 1959 Sweden.

A near-penniless drifter's journey to Alaska in search of work is interrupted when she loses her dog while attempting to shoplift food for it.

In several unrelated stories, the consequences of putting one's foot down – or failing to do so – are explored.

Elisabeth leaves her abusive and drunken husband Rolf, and goes to live with her brother, Göran. The year is 1975 and Göran lives in a commune called Together. Living in this leftist commune Elisabeth learns that the world can be viewed from different perspectives.

Alicia is an unattractive woman who is transformed into a beauty by a plastic surgeon. She soon realizes that beauty is not all that matters in this world.