Life in Silence

For Jimmy Smith, Jr., life is a daily fight just to keep hope alive. Feeding his dreams in Detroit's vibrant music scene, Jimmy wages an extraordinary personal struggle to find his own voice - and earn a place in a world where rhymes rule, legends are born and every moment… is another chance.

Jeremy Collier is a Vietnam veteran who has returned home and is struggling to cope with the war experiences that haunt him. He is also at odds with his family, who cannot begin to understand what he has been through. Jeremy's battles with his family finally spiral out of control on Thanksgiving Day, when a bitter secret is revealed

The story frames on 7-year-old Maisie, caught in a custody battle between her mother – a rock and roll icon – and her father. What Maisie Knew is an evocative portrayal of the chaos of adult life seen entirely from a child’s point of view.

After a fictitious marriage with a Russian emigrant, Cellisten Louka, a Czech man, must suddenly take responsibility for her son. However, it’s not long before the communication barrier is broken between the two new family members.

When David Wilson's young wife falls victim to cancer, he is left a single working dad with the sole responsibility of caring for his sixth grade son with autism. Patrick, who prefers to be called 'Po,' is a gifted but challenged child who was very close to his mother and unable to communicate his own sense of loss. As father and son struggle to deal with life after mom, they each begin to withdraw into their own worlds. David into the high pressure job he's close to losing and Po drifting away from the school where he's bullied into his magical fantasy world, the Land of Color, where he's just a typical carefree boy with a rich cast of other worldly companions. The growing divide between father and son and the challenges of single parenthood of a special needs child threaten to separate David and Po permanently. Based on a true story, the bonds of love between a grieving father and son are tested in the most real way in Po.

A Hispanic family find hope in their extraordinary son named Sailboat when a personal gesture awakens a global desire. Armed with a "little guitar", Sailboat leads an offbeat cast into the miraculous story of the greatest secret never told.

A single mother living in inner city Chicago, Brenda has been struggling for years to make ends meet and keep her three kids off the street. When she's laid off with no warning, she starts losing hope for the first time - until a letter arrives announcing the death of a father she's never met. Desperate for any kind of help, Brenda takes her family to Georgia for the funeral, but nothing could have prepared her for the Browns, her father's fun-loving, crass Southern clan. In a small-town world full of long afternoons and country fairs, Brenda struggles to get to know the family she never knew existed...and finds a brand new romance that just might change her life.

Emily is a plucky preteen who is entrusted with her young neighbors' most private and cherished secrets. Every Wednesday, Emily sets up a booth in her backyard that regularly attracts the guilty young souls of the neighborhood. These include Philip, whose clumsiness and his interest in Emily make him a challenging client. But complications ensue when she suddenly finds it difficult to keep all of her neighbors' secrets to herself.

Trying to bootstrap his way out of Brooklyn's mean streets is Diamond, a rap musician. With his long-time pal Gage acting as his manager, he's trying to lay down a demo tape with cut-rate studio time. To pay the bills, he and Gage run drugs for "Mr. B." Inside a week, Diamond's beloved mother dies suddenly, his father appears after an absence of 12 years and wants a relationship, and his girlfriend Kia tells him she's pregnant, asking him if he's ready to be a father. Gage steals $100,000 in a multiple-felony robbery so that Diamond can record a full album, not knowing it's Mr. B's money he's taken. B wants his money, Diamond wants his music, Tia wants an answer.

Mark is a struggling actor stuck between the life he once knew and the one waiting for him. When the mother of his two-year-old son suddenly passes away, Mark is forced to confront his shortcomings. Their fates, now intertwined, hang in the balance as Mark grapples with his ability to grow up. When he meets Lydia, a young mother, he is no longer able to live in the comfort of denial.

During the Great Depression, identical twins are separated at birth. One, Drexel Hemsley becomes a wildly successful '50s rock star, while the other, Ryan Wade, struggles to balance his passion for music and pleasing his parents, who want him to become a preacher. Finally, Ryan rebels against his parents' wishes and launches his own music career -- performing the hits of Drexel Hemsley. Ryan later learns the truth about Drexel when their fates tragically collide.

Inspired by the life of Jacqui Jackson, the story follows a self-sacrificing mother of seven children, four of whom are, in one form or another, autistic.

A single mother determined to make it as a singer puts together an all-girl reggae group named Neeta, Sweeta, & Nastie with her friends. Living in a housing estate with little support, the odds are obviously against her. Emotionally she struggles too as she learns at her mother's death that her actual mother is the woman she had thought was her older sister. With the help of a female agent, the group starts to get some exposure and rises above their setting.

A 12-year-old boy and his single mother live separate lives. The boy spends his days alone while his mother works and goes out with her friends. The boy’s solitude is both a source of freedom and a cause for grief. His explorations slowly bring to light the dark contrast between the rules of society and the laws of nature. And before long, the delicate balance of his inner world becomes shattered by unforeseen events.

As Christmas approaches, a single mother (played by Reba McEntire) struggles to raise her son and keep up the payments on her Oregon ranch, which is difficult since she's heavily in debt. But she's a tough cookie, and proves that a steadfast attitude and an open heart go a long way in surviving the cold hearts and greed of the Scrooges around her.

The tale of three mothers of first graders whose apparently perfect lives unravel to the point of murder.

Looking down on her friends and family isn't a way of life for Mary Alice Young... it's a way of death. One day, in her perfect house, in the loveliest of suburbs, Mary Alice ended it all. Now she's taking us into the lives of her family, friends and neighbors, commenting from her elevated P.O.V.

The Partridge Family is an American television sitcom series about a widowed mother and her five children who embark on a music career.

A group of single parents lean on each other to help raise their 7-year-old kids and maintain some kind of personal lives outside of parenthood.

Martin Bohm, a widower and single father, is haunted by an inability to connect to his autistic, mute 11-year-old son, Jake. Their relationship and their lives take an extraordinary turn when he discovers his gifted son has the ability to see things that no one else can and the patterns that connect seemingly unrelated events.

At home and school, she's Miley Stewart, a typical teenager, but when the lights go down and the curtain goes up, she emerges as the glamorous and talented Hannah Montana. Having the "Best of Both Worlds" is a complicated proposition, and keeping her identity under wraps leads Miley and her friends into some hilarious capers as she tries to balance her normal life with her rock star persona.

Parents secretly keep an eye on what their teenage kids get up to at music festivals.

Nathalie Lapointe is in her early forties, a single mother of three with a successful career as columnist at a major newspaper. Just as she’s starting to think she might be able to pay more attention to her own needs, she gets terrible news: the cancer from which she recovered two years previously is back. How can she break the news to her kids? How can the family plan for the future with this sword of Damocles hanging over them? Despite the shock, life goes on. Nathalie must cope with evolving circumstances at the paper as well as at home. She wonders if she can allow herself to fall in love with her daughters’ school principal. As for her children, they must deal with their own teenage life challenges, all the while knowing that their mother may soon be gone. Nathalie’s best friend and neighbor is particularly hard-hit by the news: she’s already suffering from her husband’s infidelity and from the absence of her son, who is overseas. Nathalie’s misfortune also has a powerful effect on her three siblings. They must re-think their priorities at a time when all three are facing crucial choices in their emotional and professional lives. For Nathalie’s parents Janine and Gérard, her illness makes no sense. How do you face the very real possibility that your child will die before you?

A contemporary take on a seemingly perfect Catholic family, whose lives take an unexpected turn when surprising truths are revealed. Instead of ruining their family, the honesty triggers a new, messier chapter where everyone stops pretending to be perfect and actually starts being real.

The raucous adventures of some of music’s most legendary artists, as told by those who knew them best. Featuring animated interviews with former bandmates, friends and other erstwhile associates, who share uncensored anecdotes about these artists, brought to life with animated reenactments and woven together with live-action archival performance footage and photos.

The story of a middle-class family coping with the sudden passing of their beloved patriarch Patrick, a whimsical inventor who touched the lives of all who knew him. Devastated, his family finds hope in a guide book he created for his sons.

Having a hard time making ends meet after her divorce, Millicent Torkelson moves her three children to Seattle, where she becomes the nanny to the spoiled Morgan children.

The life of a single, carefree man suddenly changes when he has to take care of three nieces.

In a sleepy North Dakota town, where the crime rate is so low people often don’t lock their front doors, 20-year-old college student Andrew Sadek mysteriously disappears in May 2014 and is found dead almost two months later. What Andrew’s friends and family didn’t know was that in the months before his death, he had been coerced into becoming an informant for an aggressive police task force that had been secretly operating for years. As details of Andrew’s double life are revealed, the cover of the shadowy program is blown, laying bare the collusion and abuse of power of local law enforcement at all levels. Following the Sadek family’s fight for the truth about how their son was killed, the film skillfully uncovers the forces at play in his death and reveals why law enforcement secretly waged a war on drugs, on a college campus that didn’t have a drug problem.

Extraordinary lives revealed through a handful of images - both famous and private - and by those who knew them best.