11-year-old Akeelah Anderson has a way with words. After winning her schoolwide spelling bee, she decides to enter the competition, despite her classmates' derision and the antipathy of her mother Tanya. Thanks to the efforts of her teacher Dr. Larabee, she reaches the finals. As she gets to know her fellow competitors, Akeelah realizes that coming first isn't everything in life.

For as long as she can remember, 16 year-old Gracie has been raising her four siblings, each of whom has a different, absent father and their mother is on the fast track to self-destruction. When these children's lives are about to be pulled apart, Gracie will have to do the impossible and make the ultimate sacrifices to keep her family together.

In an evangelical house on the outskirts of a Brazilian megalopolis, a young trans man revisits his family after years. Gradually, what could be just a Sunday lunch turns into a suffocating plot of abuse and violence.

This is the story of actress Frances Farmer, her struggles with mental illness and involuntary confinement in an insane asylum.

Kasper's life is full of speed. He has a wonderful girlfriend, a successful career as a racing driver, and loves his university studies. But underneath the surface traces from a traumatic and violent childhood threaten his road to adulthood.

Muriel Davidson, a successful mystery author in a vulnerable stage of her life, falls for a charismatic ex-con. As they begin to bond over their traumatic pasts, Muriel's life slowly begins to resemble one of her darker novels.

While on a date, a girl recalls one of her most painful memories about her relationship with her abusive father when she was a child.

The moments before the violent physical attack of a mother by her anxious son.