North Carolina 1863, the Civil War is raging. In this inspired story of tragedy and love we follow the lives of Melody, a precocious seven-year old, and her young mother Sarah as they struggle on their farm to survive during the Civil War.

Unrest breaks out in eastern Helsinki as a Finnish family man gets hospitalized in the summer of 2015. Gangs of young people are burning down cars and public buildings, confronting the security guards and the riot police. The narrative goes backwards, towards the riots which mark the end of our movie. As the story begins, the unrest is still bubbling under, ready to explode any time. Vandalism and robbery are not uncommon in the suburbs; neither is violence towards the police and the security guards. Frustration, alienation, isolation and poverty corrode the asphalt surface of the multicultured society, otherwise relatively harmonious.

Fannie Fairchild locked up her heart when her beloved George was killed in the Great War. But now she faces her own mortality and realizes that she has no one to maintain her grave with flowers.

Harrison Lloyd is a Pulitzer-winning photojournalist. His wife and family are making it hard for him to keep his mind on his work when he’s in a war zone, and he wants to change jobs to something less stressful. But he’s got one last assignment, in war-torn Yugoslavia, in 1991, at the height of the fighting. Word comes back that he apparently died in a building collapse, but his wife Sarah (also a journalist for Newsweek) refuses to believe that he’s dead and goes looking for him. She’s helped immensely by the photo-journalists Eric Kyle and Marc Stevenson that she runs into over there; together, they’re determined to make it through the chaotic landscape to Vukovar, which is not only the nexus of the war but where she believes Harrison is located. Meanwhile, Harrison’s son Cesar is looking after his father’s prized greenhouse, keeping hope, and flowers, alive.

As a young father, watching his daughter go through her life experiences, film director Alexandre Mourot discovered the Montessori approach and decided to set his camera up in a children’s house (3 to 6 years of age) in the oldest Montessori school in France. Alexandre was warmly welcomed in a surprisingly calm and peaceful environment, filled with flowers, fruits and Montessori materials. He met happy children, who were free to move about, working alone or in small groups. The teacher remained very discreet. Some children were reading, others were making bread, doing division, laughing or sleeping. The children guided the film director throughout the whole school year, helping him to understand the magic of their autonomy and self-esteem – the seeds of a new society of peace and freedom, which Maria Montessori dedicated her life work to.

The third installment in V.C. Andrews’ bestselling series that began with “Flowers in the Attic,” “If There Be Thorns” follows Christopher and Cathy Dollanganger as they live together as man and wife with Cathy’s two sons who are unaware of the incestuous nature of their parents’ relationship. But when a mysterious woman moves in next door and befriends the younger boy, Bart, he begins a strange transformation and displays accusatory behavior towards Cathy and Christopher. When Christopher discovers their mysterious neighbor is, in fact, his mother Corrine Dollanganger, all of the family’s long-hidden secrets are revealed in a tragic climax.

Rich and powerful Simon Qing has been schooled in the ways of sex by his virile father, but is still a virgin. That is, until he meets his first love Violetta who has fun with him all over his father’s estate. Their love does not last, so Simon embarks on a journey. Along the way he meets the comely nun Moon whom Simon deflowers and then marries. He then becomes enamored of Golden Lotus but she is married to dwarf Wu Da-Lang.

When bullied Molly Flowers declares her dislike of boys, her boozy and self medicated mother invents a story to shock her into a more sympathetic view. The tale of how Molly had actually been born a boy called Bradford Dillman but, because of Mum’s want for a little girl, she asked the doctors to chop her willy off. The offending item has been kept for Molly in a shoebox on top of her wardrobe which now looms over everything she does. Molly’s over active imagination manifests itself into the arrival of Bradford Dillman. When Mum denies all knowledge of the tale, who will Molly choose to believe in?