A homeless family's luck changes after they help an old woman who has even less than they do at Christmas.

Aunt Pearl arrives one day pushing a shopping cart full of her worldly goods. Her sister Rose has invited her to come live with her family. Six-year-old Marta is happy to meet her aunt, who takes her out to look for treasure on garbage day, and who shows her camp group how to decorate a coffee table with bottle caps. But almost immediately, Pearl and Rose start to clash - over Pearl's belongings crammed into the house, and over Rose's household rules....

"Reluctant lawyer Andy Carpenter doesn't usually stop to help others, but seeing a dog next to a homeless man inspires him to give the pair some money to help. It's just Andy's luck that things don't end there. Soon after Andy's encounter with them, man and dog are attacked in the middle of the night on the street. The dog defends its new owner, and the erstwhile attacker is bitten but escapes. But the dog is quarantined and the man, Don Carrigan,...

MODERN & CONTEMPORARY FICTION (POST C 1945). Richard Mayhew is a plain man with a good heart -- and an ordinary life that is changed forever on a day he stops to help a girl he finds bleeding on a London sidewalk. From that moment forward he is propelled into a world he never dreamed existed -- a dark subculture flourish in abandoned subway stations and sewer tunnels below the city -- a world far stranger and more dangerous than the only one he has...

Three films tell stories of personal loss, discovery, and transformation. In The cats of Mirikitani, a homeless artist reconciles with his bitter past and finds family, new friends, and a new life. In Pilgrimage, the children of Japanese Americans held in WWII internment camps learn their parents' hidden history, and in the process rediscover their heritage, help their parents heal, and transform a dark memory into a symbol of hope. In the short animation,...