A married Spanish woman named Bluebird attempts to hike the entire Appalachian Trail solo in order to find clarity, but her solitude is interrupted by a young American hiker. The pair develop an emotional and romantic connection while traveling together, but Bluebird ultimately must face the trail and her own feelings alone.

Henry Poole abandons his fiancée and family business to spend what he believes are his remaining days alone. The discovery of a ‘miracle’ by a nosy neighbor ruptures his solitude and restores his faith in life.

Joe, a rancher in the mountains of Colorado, has his life of solitude interrupted when his luckless son gets paroled from prison and moves back in with him, bringing his ill-fated ways along.

After running into a neighbourhood acquaintance at the local used record store who shared his list of 15 reasons to live, Alan Zweig felt a strong compulsion to make a film on the subject, despite his admission, “I didn’t make lists and I never thought about reasons to live.” From this inspiration begins a series of episodic chapters adapted to the themes of Ray Robertson’s collection of essays. The participants are as eclectic as the list, sharing personal anecdotes related to (among other themes) work, love, intoxication, humour, solitude, duty, home and death. Humorous and sometimes heartbreaking, Zweig’s compassion for his subjects and their stories, expressed through his conversational and candid interview style, ties these vignettes together in a visual essay that strikes deeper chords about finding meaning in our existence. Amongst his subjects’ reasons to live Zweig finds a couple of his own in his touching, honest and endearing way.

An intimate portrait of the city and its people. We meet the characters in the NYC subway and we follow them to the surface finding out about their lives, cravings, passions, hopes and dreams – sometimes lost and sometimes still waiting to be fulfilled. What comes out of it is an emotional tale of solitude that haunts us in 21st century western world.