Speech Day

Heroin addict Mark Renton stumbles through bad ideas and sobriety attempts with his unreliable friends - Sick Boy, Begbie, Spud and Tommy. He also has an underage girlfriend, Diane, along for the ride. After cleaning up and moving from Edinburgh to London, Mark finds he can't escape the life he left behind when Begbie shows up at his front door on the lam, and a scheming Sick Boy follows.

Young, impulsive Rosetta lives a hard and stressful life as she struggles to support herself and her alcoholic mother. Refusing all charity, she is desperate to maintain a dignified job.

Angie is a working class woman. After being fired, she decides to set up a recruitment agency of her own, running it from her kitchen with her friend, Rose. Taking advantage of the desperation of immigrants, Angie builds a successful business extremely quickly.

Lorna is a young Albanian woman in a marriage of convenience with Claudy, a heroin addict. Just as Lorna is about to be granted Belgian citizenship, Claudy finds the strength to detox; this presents a problem not only for Lorna, but for the criminal who brokered the deal.

Amid sweltering summer heat, Fei, a florist in her early twenties, begins to suspect her boyfriend of cheating. As doubt takes root for Fei, she drifts in search of connection elsewhere.

Viveca is 31, divorced, and has a son of 6 years. She and her friend Aud have left the hectic everyday life and moved in with bohemians and artists. We follow these two women for five days, as they come in contact with many different people.

In South Yorkshire, a small group of railway maintenance men discover that because of privatization, their lives will never be the same. When the trusty British Rail sign is replaced by one reading East Midland Infrastructure, it is clear that there will be the inevitable winners and losers as downsizing and efficiency become the new buzzwords.

Zoë is a single mother who lives with her four children in Dartford. She is poor and can't afford to buy food. One day her old flame drives by and asks her to go on a date with him. Scared that he doesn't want to go out with her, she lies and tells him that she is just babysitting the kids. This will be her first date in years.

An MI5 double agent is forced to stop his brother's gang from committing an insurgency on the British Government. But does the love for his brother outweigh a conflict of beliefs and ideals?

Claudio is a construction worker living in the outskirts of Rome. He's happily married and his wife is pregnant with their third child. However, a dramatic event comes to upset this simple and happy life.