Silent Summer

Jerry McGill, an Arizona cowpuncher, arrives in Los Angeles, is robbed by a stranger in a taxi, and is stranded. He is befriended by Frankie, a newsboy, who buys his dinner and becomes his pal. Jerry joins the police force as a mounted policeman and, while patrolling a wealthy residential district, thwarts a holdup perpetrated on heiress Virginia Selby by her companion, Count Mirski, who has hired two crooks. To Frankie's sorrow, Jerry and Virginia become fast friends. She invites Jerry to a dinner party, where the count plots to rob the Selby safe; but when Virginia interrupts the crooks she is kidnapped. Jerry, warned by Frankie's dog, pursues the crooks in a car; when ditched, he follows on a motorcycle and subdues the count and his men. Virginia's father invites Jerry to his ranch, and he is united with Virginia.

Doctor Yoel Pomerantz is a washed-up, self-loathing psychologist who lives on the 12th floor of a high-rise with his Aspberger's son, Yoav, who spends his days pretending to be a traffic cop and proudly giving out parking tickets. Dr. Pomerantz sees a few patients a week, barely enough to keep he and Yoav in ramen noodles and with a roof over their heads. In addition, he works shifts at a suicide hotline. When he gets desperate financially, he recruits hotline callers to see him privately, which is discovered and results in his getting unceremoniously fired. (Meanwhile Yoav is getting a blow job from a would-be parking offender, Bracha Nachmias.) Except that the former hotline callers keep coming, and begin offering Pomerantz cash to jump from his balcony to their deaths. One such jumper is followed by her niece, who comes looking for her aunt moments after Pomerantz decides himself to jump, as he realizes he has hit bottom with his new "business". Meanwhile Yoav has come home from "work" and ends up preventing the niece from jumping onto her aunt, then comforting her on the loss of her aunt, and finally telling her he loves her and will look after her.

The sun rises over the smokestacks and church steeples of Hochelaga-Maisonneuve -- a working-class neighbourhood in the east end of Montreal hovering on the edge of gentrification. The service industry has replaced manufacturing, welfare has replaced wages, and the cinema and television screen have replaced the church. Before this particular day is through, we will have witnessed this social shift mirrored in the personal crises weathered by a handful of local folk who are being cast helplessly and hopelessly adrift. Father Yan, a 50-ish parish priest, starts his day with a new message to deliver and a growing anxiety as to whether there is anybody out there with whom to share it. Meanwhile, Melanie sees her troubled young life staring her in the face from her bathroom mirror -- a reflection that stalks her grim day of work in the fruit and vegetable store. Grace, a struggling performance artist, awakens to another aimless day. Al McDonald, a predatory real-estate developer, swoops down upon the unsuspecting neighbourhood, barely ready for his encounter with the enigmatic Izzy that will turn his day upside down. Jeff Fisher, a functional artist who doesn't fit, rescues riches from the back alleys. Each one of these strangers succeeds in kindling a flicker of hope that might just make this life worth living, little knowing how close they are to others who share the thoughts and feelings that have made their day.