Dean, a young hood, and his wife take their disturbed young son, Shane, to a clinic where the boy is diagnosed by Stevie, a psychologist. They discover that the boy is autistic. As the couple's marriage falls apart, Stevie believes she can help Shane as well as possibly help Dean break away from the backstreet dealings that he is living with.
On the Isle of Wight, just off the South Coast of England, a train accident means that the main hospital is completely full and is unable to take in any more patients. The smaller and older hospital, Mercy Falls which is more isolated, is being closed down however this accident means that some of the patients, including the childrens ward, need to remain at the site until there is availability elsewhere. The hospital has three floors with the children's ward on the first floor. The second floor was closed off twenty years before and is unaccessable due to the elevator buttons being disabled and the stairs blocked off.
A young man with autism, named Cho-won, finds release only in running. As a child, Cho-won regularly threw tantrums, bit himself, and refused to communicate with others—finding solace only in zebras and the Korean snack, choco pie. His mother never gave up on him and was determined to prove to the world that her child can be normal. As Cho-won gets older, he begins to find a passion for running and his mother is there to encourage and support him. Even though their family suffers from financial difficulties, they find a former marathon champion, Jung-wook — now a lethargic older man with an alcohol problem.
Clara, (Sylvie Testud), works in a birdshop. She is concerned about her deaf-mute daughter Anna, (Camille Gauthier), whom she is bringing up on her own. She has never spoken a single word. Clara herself is illiterate. Ever since her grandmother Baba, whom she adored, had been the victim of an attack when she was reading her a story, she has always refused to learn to read and write. Now that the silence of her daughter Anna is causing her to be bullied by her peers, Clara feels obliged to withdraw her from her school, and to enrol her in a school for the deaf-mute, run by Vincent, (Sergi López). Vincent, the principal, suggests giving his new pupil particular classes to teach her Sign Language, and so facilitate Anna's integration.
Karen Barth (Gilbert) is the divorced mother of Michael (Pierce), a young autistic boy who is unable to speak or write. After an incident in which Michael wanders away from home to the local playground, Karen's ex-husband Roger realizes that Michael may need more specialized care than she can provide, and suggests Michael be enrolled in a special residential school.
Victor Robinson has just moved into a country home with his family. When his son, Jesse, finds an old Edison invention and begins to play it, he hears the sounds of children laughing and playing. This is followed by Victor's autistic 12-year-old daughter, Meaghan, painting and singing; this is surrounded by strange occurrences around the house. When Victor discovers that two children were murdered in the area years before, he believes they are trying to contact him; he also believes that their neighbor is responsible for the murders.
Suzie (Micheline Lanctôt), a 58-year-old taxi driver suffering from depression, finds a 10-year-old autistic boy named Charles (Gabriel Gaudreault) alone in the back seat of her cab one Halloween night. The boy's mother has left him with a note directing that he be taken to his father. Suzie takes Charles to his father, and thus gets drawn into a conflict between the boy's parents. Realizing the parents have no idea what to do with their son, Suzie leaves with him, and proceeds to go to an underground gambling den. She wins money at poker and buys two plane tickets to Morocco, intending to search for her daughter, who was taken to the country by her father twenty years ago.
Wesley, (William Lee Scott) a car thief and musician sent to live at a halfway house on the campus of a Christian college meets Vernon, (Lucas Black) an autistic piano player in need of a friend. Together they team up with the struggling halfway house band to create the Killer Diller Blues Band.
Sue Rubin, une femme autiste qui, enfant, était considérée comme retardée. À 13 ans, elle apprend à s'exprimer à l'aide d'un clavier d'ordinateur, révélant ainsi son intelligence. Par la suite, elle étudie l'histoire à Whittier College (Whittier) et écrit des discours sur sa vie d'autiste. Le réalisatrice Wurzburg a qualifié Rubin de « Helen Keller de notre génération. »
The story revolves around the relationship of a mother and her son, set in Kodaikanal. The movie commences with Rama Krishna (Jiiva) and his mother Saradha (Saranya Ponvannan), a school teacher, lying in a pool of blood; The police find Raam is still alive and arrest him on charges of murdering his mother. Police inspector Umar (Rahman) works on the case. The story is narrated in flashback.
The film recounts six months in the 2005-06 life of five children with autism and their parents in Los Angeles, California as their children write and rehearse for an original stage production. Among the children, Henry Stills is an expert on dinosaurs and a budding comedian; Adam Mandela Walden plays the cello and sings in the film. The other children featured in the film have one or more things they excel at doing if only given the training they need to communicate and develop those skills.
Redheaded twins Anna (Nikki Haddad) and Sarah (Jessi Haddad) Woodruff, roughly 10 or 11 years old, both have Asperger, an autism spectrum disorder (ASD), and Sarah is going blind. Child psychologist and researcher Dr. Reineger (Edmund Gildersleeve) tries to assure their parents (Courtney Sanford, Travis Poelle) that the kids are smart and "intricately involved in their own imagination". The children enter an institute to be studied, two family tragedies occur, and the girls escape the institution. Throughout much of the film, we see a magical, distorted world through their eyes.