From the Heart

An average family is thrust into the spotlight after the father commits a seemingly self-defense murder at his diner.

Don Collier has a wonderful life and family, but no time to enjoy either. His impossible boss even has him collecting signatures for a huge project the day before Christmas, but as he goes office to office it seems that every signer is a ghost from his past, and he soon begins to wonder if this is coincidence... or heavenly intervention.

A fading southern belle moves in with her sister in New Orleans where her ferocious brother-in-law takes stabs at her sanity.

A family loaded with quirky, colorful characters piles into an old van and road trips to California for little Olive to compete in a beauty pageant.

Heidi heads to the Heidelberg Christmas market to sell her hand-painted ornaments. While there, she falls for a local artisan who helps her reconnect with her lost heritage.

Ania is an apprentice at a small hairdressing parlour along with her best friend, Kasia. The two teenage girls from dysfunctional families share a common dream of becoming professional hair stylists.

When their father passes away, four grown, world-weary siblings return to their childhood home and are requested - with an admonition - to stay there together for a week, along with their free-speaking mother and a collection of spouses, exes and might-have-beens. As the brothers and sisters re-examine their shared history and the status of each tattered relationship among those who know and love them best, they reconnect in hysterically funny and emotionally significant ways.

37-year-old Italian-American widow Loretta Castorini believes she is unlucky in love, and so accepts a marriage proposal from her boyfriend Johnny, even though she doesn't love him. When she meets his estranged younger brother Ronny, an emotional and passionate man, she finds herself drawn to him. She tries to resist, but Ronny, who blames his brother for the loss of his hand, has no scruples about aggressively pursuing her while Johnny is out of the country. As Loretta falls for Ronny, she learns that she's not the only one in her family with a secret romance.

With the threat of having to close her father's candy store, Wendy and her six-year-old daughter Grace travel to the big city in hopes of making extra holiday cash to save the store. When she's offered a job in the toy department of Wolmans, the city's biggest department store, Wendy can't wait! Her excitement doesn't last long when the store's manager, Teanna, destroys the Christmas spirit throughout the store and replaces Santa with a hunky male underwear model surrounded by elfin "babes." What Teanna is unaware of is that she has in fact sacked the real Santa. Unaware of his real "Santa" status, Wendy reaches out to the old man but it seems even he has given up hope. With her daughter losing faith in the holiday, Wendy realizes she must bring the true meaning of Christmas back to Wolmans before it is too late.

Ashley was raised in a picture perfect all-American family with two moms, two grandpas, two uncles, and a little brother. But Ashley has a problem, she has a crush on a boy at school, which is against everything this world has ever taught her.

Based on one of Iwadate Mariko's short stories appearing in the shoujo manga monthly magazine Margaret. This is a character study of a rather traumatized young woman who develops a crush on a man who lives next door to her.