Toni, a very accomplished social worker and award winning nurse, is engaged to successful physician, Dr Ralph Mallory and works in a hospital run by Ralph's father. Following the death of her teenage son, Toni is acutely aware of how short life can be and is determined to live it on her terms. Van, Toni's best friend also works in the hospital and has been a great support throughout her recent ordeal On the surface, a well adjusted middle class woman in a stable relationship, we are soon made aware of Toni's long term longing for women and her struggle to deal with it and conform. Rescuing Desire takes us through Toni's exploration of her sexuality and Van's efforts to ensure Toni's safety during her self discovery

A theater director struggles with his work, and the women in his life, as he attempts to create a life-size replica of New York inside a warehouse as part of his new play.

The first film of New York-based French director Raphael Nadjari is an adaptation of Dostoyevsky's The Gentle Creature, which had also inspired Une Femme douce of Robert Bresson. The Shade is a drama about a mysterious woman and a pawnbroker who meet in New York. The film begins with Simon, who is alone in his apartment with the corpse of his wife, Anna, who has just committed suicide. In his grief, he remembers the first time he met her, a year ago when she walked into his pawnbroker's shop in Spanish Harlem. Mysterious Anna, who seems to come from nowhere, impresses solitary Simon with her sad beauty, and he proposes to her on their first night out. The Shade is a love story with great psychological insight.

Michelle, a 10-year-old survivor of the 2010 Haiti earthquake, attempts to escape both her past and her new home when she learns that her "new" family is not what they seem.

Buddy Visalo (Michael Rispoli) is a factory worker, a frustrated crooner who once had a shot at the big time. Buddy's dreams of greatness have been reduced to an endless series of failed moneymaking schemes. His latest is buying a two-family house for him and his wife, Estelle (Katherine Narducci) and converting the ground floor into a neighborhood bar where he can perform. The wrench in the works is that he also inherits the upstairs tenants, Mary,a pregnant Irish girl fresh off the boat (Kelly Macdonald) and her abusive, alcoholic husband, Jim (Kevin Conway). As Buddy's gang of Italians tries to handle the situation, the girl goes into labor, and a baby is born, forcing them all to confront the limits of their tolerance and compassion.