Compulsive gambler Oz lives in a rent-controlled apartment in Brooklyn, with his roommate, Ivy-League dropout Ish. Crippled by an unspoken fear of failure, the serial underachievers whittle the hours away playing video games and discussing plans for a band that has yet to leave the realm of the hypothetical. But after they meet graffiti artist Veronica, who challenges them to take action, Oz and Ish must examine themselves for the first time.
Ish
Oz
Veronica
Nola Darling Fan Club
A documentary about the closure of General Motors' plant at Flint, Michigan, which resulted in the loss of 30,000 jobs. Details the attempts of filmmaker Michael Moore to get an interview with GM CEO Roger Smith.
With the help of a talking freeway billboard, a "wacky weatherman" tries to win the heart of an English newspaper reporter, who is struggling to make sense of the strange world of early-90s Los Angeles.
Unemployed Antonio is elated when he finally finds work hanging posters around war-torn Rome. However on his first day, his bicycle—essential to his work—gets stolen. His job is doomed unless he can find the thief. With the help of his son, Antonio combs the city, becoming desperate for justice.
The ever-poker-faced Ilona loses her job as a restaurant hostess, as her tram driver husband, Lauri, also finds himself out of work. Together they must hit the streets of Helsinki, facing up to hardship and humiliation in their quest for survival, guided through the gloom by a ray of hope.
Ainhoa is 8 years old and has left home with her school bag, a Playmobil figure and a secret plan.
Sheffield, England. Gaz, a jobless steelworker in need of quick cash persuades his mates to bare it all in a one-night-only strip show.
Three lovable party buds try to bail their friend out of jail. But just when the guys have mastered a plan, everything comes dangerously close to going up in smoke.
Raghuvaran, who is unemployed for years, gets his dream job but a powerful rival is keen to put him down. Can he take on his adversary?
A frustrated, unemployed teacher joins forces with a scammer and his girlfriend in a blackmailing scheme.
When he hears that the new female employee digs ambitious men who are the store employee of the month, a slacker gets his act together but finds himself in competition with his rival, an ambitious co-worker.
A heroin junkie works as a prostitute to support his habit and fund an abortion needed by the girlfriend of his lesbian wife. His seedy encounters with delusional and damaged clients, and dates with drag queens and hustlers are heavy on sex, drugs and decadence.
One day, Carmen Müller realizes that her husband Werner has been unemployed for months and has accumulated debts of 80,000 DM in their bank account. She comes up with a plan to rob her bank. When the branch manager and neighbor Lothar Fuchs, whom Carmen has always envied for his beauty and wealth, recognizes her, she takes him hostage. In their hideout in the Allgäu, the banker falls in love with the housewife, just as Werner and Fuchs' mistress Gabriele grow closer. The quartet form an alliance and defraud the bank together. Having come into money so suddenly, the Müllers don't feel comfortable either and secretly distribute their fortune around the neighborhood.
Master painter Hans Moll and his wife, the television announcer Ms. Wellinek and her husband, and the German-Russian Jew Yevgenia have many things to live on: food, drink, an apartment. What they do not have is work. They all discover the yearning for a chance to start all over again and bring themselves back to life.
The twelve-year-old Emil and his father are haunted by bad luck. To take a break from a series of family disasters, Emil is allowed to spend a few days with a friend of the family, the female priest Hummel in Berlin. In the train he runs across the slick Max Grundeis who anaesthetizes Emil and steals his savings of 1500 DM. When he finally arrives in Berlin, Emil and a gang of street kids, led by the cheeky girl Pony Hütchen, try to find the gangster, who haunts the posh Hotel Adlon as a hotel thief. Meanwhile, to prevent anyone from finding out about Emil's mishap, Gypsi, a member of the gang of kids, passes himself off as Emil, thus wreaking havoc on the home of the priest.
Craig and Smokey are two guys in Los Angeles hanging out on their porch on a Friday afternoon, smoking and drinking, looking for something to do.
In a working-class quarter of Dublin, 'Bimbo' Reeves gets laid off from his job and, with his redundancy payout, buys a van and sells fish and chips with his buddy, Larry. Due to Ireland's surprising success at the 1990 FIFA World Cup, their business starts off well, but the relationship between the two friends soon becomes strained as Bimbo behaves more like a typical boss.
Shaun Brumder is a local surfer kid from Orange County who dreams of going to Stanford to become a writer and to get away from his dysfunctional family household. Except Shaun runs into one complication after another, starting when his application is rejected after his dim-witted guidance counselor sends in the wrong form.
An advertising man is slowly sliding downhill. When he is fired from his job in Detroit, he signs up for unemployment. One day they find him a job: teaching thinking skills to Army recruits. He arrives on base to find that there is no structure set up for the class.
Brennan Huff and Dale Doback might be grown men. But that doesn't stop them from living at home and turning into jealous, competitive stepbrothers when their single parents marry. Brennan's constant competition with Dale strains his mom's marriage to Dale's dad, leaving everyone to wonder whether they'll ever see eye to eye.