Why does a hockey match go by so quickly and yet a lesson in German so slowly? Are all seconds in life the same length? What if time did not exist? These and other questions are asked by Thijs, a teenager from Holland.

John, age 12, and his younger sister, Angelina, became orphans. Just like many other children in Zambia, their parents died of AIDS. According to local tradition, their uncle takes on their upbringing. He sings to John and Angelina and tells them fairytales, but it is clear that their childhood has abruptly ended.

Julliette, a girl from Holland, tries to help her friend Seka, an elderly woman and a former actress from Sarajevo. Seka escaped the war in Bosnia and now lives in the Netherlands. She doesn’t have enough money to return to her family. Julliette, at first by herself and then with the help of her classmates, comes up with different ideas to help raise money for Seka’s plane ticket home.

Roxana’s father was found guilty of drug trafficking and put in prison. Roxana openly shares her feelings of how difficult it was for her. Now her father is back and they are together again. She tells him: “If you start trafficking drugs again, I will never forgive you.”

Naomi lives alone with her manic-depressive mother. Despite the difficulties that this illness causes, they learn to deal with it and accept its unavoidable reality. The film openly discusses their feelings, their common everyday joys, and their fears of a hereditary illness.

“When you realize that you are gay, you should tell everyone immediately,” explains Christopher, a teenage student who speaks of his own experience. How did his parents accept his different sexual orientation? What do his classmates think?

Like pieces of a puzzle, the picture of the lives of two seven year-old girls fit together. They live very different, yet at the same time very similar lives. Both of them are Indian by origin, but while Reshman still lives in Goa, Olivia was born in Canada. The film forms an imaginary bridge between the lives of these two girls, who have the same roots but who live on opposite sides of the world, and illustrates striking differences between the prosperous West and the Global South.

Their parents’ divorce has completely changed the lives of step-siblings Kimberly and Andries. Now it is full of continuous travel between two homes, making new contacts, searching for an answer to the question “Where do I belong?” and adjusting to the many changes.

For children living on the streets in the Tanzanian town of Singida, every day is a battle to survive. Only a few of them are fortunate enough to live in an orphanage run by a foreign humanitarian organization. Only a few of them have a chance at a better future.