New Turn

Ah-Ching and his friends have just finished school in their island fishing village, and now spend most of their time drinking and fighting. Three of them decide to go to the port city of Kaohsiung to look for work. They find an apartment through relatives, and Ah-Ching is attracted to the girlfriend of a neighbor. There they face the harsh realities of the big city.

Newly widowed Frank Fogle embarks on a journey to Ireland to scatter his late wife’s ashes. His estranged son, Sean, recently released from prison, agrees to join only when his father promises that they’ll never see each other again following the trip. After revelations surface about an old flame of Frank’s wife and a charming hitchhiker with plans of her own intervenes, father and son find themselves drawn together in unexpected ways.

Clara and her two sons escape from her abusive husband with little more than their car and plan to start over in New York. After the car towed away, the family meets Alice, who gets them into an emergency shelter. While stealing food at a Russian restaurant called ‘Winter Palace’, Clara meets Marc, who has been given the chance to help the old eatery regain its former glory. The ‘Winter Palace’ soon becomes a place of unexpected encounters between people who are all undergoing some sort of crisis and whom fate has now brought together.

Two married couples adjust to the vast social and economic changes taking place in China from the 1980s to the present.