The Exception to the Rule

After moving to a new town, troublemaking teen Jim Stark is supposed to have a clean slate, although being the new kid in town brings its own problems. While searching for some stability, Stark forms a bond with a disturbed classmate, Plato, and falls for local girl Judy. However, Judy is the girlfriend of neighborhood tough, Buzz. When Buzz violently confronts Jim and challenges him to a drag race, the new kid's real troubles begin.

Mary and her friend, Rachel, are new students at St. Francis Academy, a boarding school run by the iron fist of Mother Superior. The immature teens grow bored and begin playing pranks on both the unsuspecting nuns and their unpleasant classmates, becoming a constant thorn in Mother Superior's side. However, as the years pass, Mary and Rachel slowly mature and begin to see the nuns in a different light.

A young Kyrgyz immigrant tries to eke out a living in Moscow after abandoning her newborn and fleeing the hospital.

Vera is a troubled teenager fresh out of school feeling trapped in her provincial port town during the turbulent times of perestroika. Her days and nights are filled with drinking, sex, and family dysfunction.

A young sex worker from Brooklyn gets her chance at a Cinderella story when she meets and impulsively marries the son of an oligarch. Once the news reaches Russia, her fairytale is threatened as his parents set out to get the marriage annulled.

On the eve of a seven-year prison sentence, a New York drug dealer spends his final day of freedom confronting his past, his relationships, and the choices that led to his downfall in a city still reeling from 9/11.

Contemporary Russia. After he flubs a penalty kick, a humiliated national soccer player quits the game. He flees to a small town, where he decides to coach their local team.

A unique friendship develops when a little girl and her dying mother inherit a cook - Mr. Church. What begins as an arrangement that should only last six months, instead spans fifteen years.

Clara and her two sons escape from her abusive husband with little more than their car and plan to start over in New York. After the car towed away, the family meets Alice, who gets them into an emergency shelter. While stealing food at a Russian restaurant called ‘Winter Palace’, Clara meets Marc, who has been given the chance to help the old eatery regain its former glory. The ‘Winter Palace’ soon becomes a place of unexpected encounters between people who are all undergoing some sort of crisis and whom fate has now brought together.

Anatoly Novoseltsev is a mousy single father and office stumblebum working at a statistics bureau in Moscow. In the hopes of being promoted, he is coaxed into charming his disagreeable and seemingly unfeeling boss, Ludmila Kalugina, or "Meany" as she's otherwise known by her subordinates. Helped by his colleagues Olya and Yura, Anatoly attempts to ease the yoke of Ms. Kalugina, and what follows in the wake of his graceless manoeuvres is completely unforeseen, as he awakens a side to her not yet known, even to herself..

Slava Kolotilov, a schoolteacher from the town of Palchiki, arrived in Moscow with a manuscript of his novel in hand and met Nadia. Before the wedding, Deputy Trekhgolovich, confused, mistakes Kolotilov for the coach of a children's soccer team. Trekhgolovich confiscates Kolotilov's passport and tears up his ticket to Moscow, while Kolotilov does everything he can to ensure that his hastily assembled team loses so that he can leave for his bride.

In a seemingly perfect community, without war, pain, suffering, differences or choice, a young boy is chosen to learn from an elderly man about the true pain and pleasure of the "real" world.