Pieces of AprilMovies like Pieces of April
- Key Features:
- Dysfunctional family, Thanksgiving, Family reconciliation, Terminal illness, Quirky protagonist, New York City, Interpersonal relationships, Character growth, Independent film
- Tone:
- humorous, earnest
- Target Audience:
- Indie film enthusiasts, Dramedy viewers, Character-driven stories, Viewers interested in family dynamics
- Emotional Arc:
- Anxiety → Connection → Hope
Pieces of April

Quirky and rebellious April Burns lives with her boyfriend in a low-rent New York City apartment miles away from her emotionally distant family. But when she discovers that her mother has a fatal form of breast cancer, she invites the clan to her place for Thanksgiving. While her father struggles to drive her family into the city, April -- an inexperienced cook -- runs into kitchen trouble and must ask a neighbor for help.
Pieces of April
When a young mother's home birth ends in unfathomable tragedy, she begins a year-long odyssey of mourning that fractures relationships with loved ones in this deeply personal story of a woman learning to live alongside her loss.

Newly-divorced actress Molly, her recently-dumped lesbian best friend Abby and Molly’s mother Helen host a dysfunctional, comical and chaotic Thanksgiving dinner for their motley crew of close friends and strange acquaintances.

When Krisha returns to her estranged family for Thanksgiving dinner, past demons threaten to ruin the festivities.

Sandy is a stressed-out, single mom who learns that her ex-husband is marrying a younger woman. Her friend Jesse's parents don't know that she has a family or that her sister, Gabi is married to a woman. Jesse's friend, Kristin, is juggling motherhood of a toddler, a patient boyfriend who keeps proposing, and searching for her biological mother. Bradley is a widower who's trying to raise two daughters on his own, while Miranda is too busy with her career to worry about children. When their respective problems intersect and start coming to a head, the Mother's Day holiday takes on a special meaning for all.

Overweight and insecure, Simi spends Easter weekend with her famous nutritionist aunt. The hope is that it’ll help her get on a healthier track, but as the aunt’s family’s icy dynamics and an increasingly malevolent atmosphere leave Simi feeling uneasy, weight isn’t the only thing she’s about to lose.

A recent widow invites her husband's troubled best friend to live with her and her two children. As he gradually turns his life around, he helps the family cope and confront their loss.

The death of the Kimbrough family matriarch affects the three male survivors of the clan. Widower Easy tries to reconnect with his old flame, Marg. Eldest son and struggling musician Guy moves back to town, feeling guilty that he missed the funeral. His brother, Beagle, who was his mother's caretaker, falls for Marg's granddaughter, Georgia, a chronically ill girl who fears her time is growing short.

After losing her job, making out with her soon-to-be former boss, and finding out that her daughter plans to spend Thanksgiving with her boyfriend, Claudia Larson faces spending the holiday with her unhinged family.

In a suburban landscape, the lives of several families interlace with loss, despair and personal crisis. Esther Gold has lost focus on all but caring for her comatose son, Paul, and neglects her daughter and husband. Lawyer Jim Train is devoted to his career, not his family. Helen Christianson wants to find a new spark in life, while Annette Jennings tries to rebuild hers.

There are dysfunctional families... and then there are the Conways. After a family tragedy, 15-year-old Billy Conway has become the de facto glue between his bitter mom, distant brother, and stoic dad. But when Billy starts to act out, everything changes for him and his family

After his older brother passes away, Lee Chandler is forced to return home to care for his 16-year-old nephew. There he is compelled to deal with a tragic past that separated him from his family and the community where he was born and raised.

David, a struggling comedy writer fresh off from breaking up with his boyfriend, moves from New York City to Sacramento to help his sick mother. Living with his conservative father and much-younger sisters for the first time in ten years, he feels like a stranger in his childhood home. As his mother’s health declines, David frantically tries to extract meaning from this horrible experience and convince everyone (including himself) that he's "doing okay.”

Anna is stuck: she’s approaching 30 and has just moved back to her rural home-town, and into a shed in her mother’s backyard. She spends her time working a menial job at a local boating center and hides in the depths of her imagination, making movies with her thumbs. Irritated by her childish behavior, Anna's mother insists that she move out of her shed and on with her life. When a troubled young boy starts hanging around, the two form an unlikely bond. Through their strange yet mutually beneficial friendship, Anna slowly begins to confront her perpetual state of arrested development.

In a politically-divided United States, a man struggles to make it through the Thanksgiving holiday without destroying his family.

A man's affair with his friend's much-younger daughter throws two neighboring families into turmoil.

Punk-rocker turned suburban mom, Kelly, is nostalgic for a life she can no longer have and uncertain of a future she doesn’t yet fit in. Seventeen-year-old Cal is frustrated at his lack of control over the hand he's been dealt. When the two strike up an unlikely friendship, it's the perfect spark needed to thrust them both back to life.

In New York City, a husband and wife butt heads with the granddaughters of the elderly woman who lives in the apartment the couple owns.

Kate and Charlie like to have a good time. Their marriage thrives on a shared fondness for music, laughter… and getting smashed. When Kate’s partying spirals into hard-core asocial behavior, compromising her job as an elementary schoolteacher, something’s got to give. But change isn’t exactly a cakewalk. Sobriety means she will have to confront the lies she’s been spinning at work, her troubling relationship with her mother, and the nature of her bond with Charlie.

James White is a troubled twentysomething trying to stay afloat in a frenzied New York City. As he retreats further into a hedonistic lifestyle, his mother's battle with a serious illness faces a series of setbacks that force him to assume more responsibility. With the pressure on him mounting, James must find new reserves of strength or risk imploding completely.

Still mourning the death of her mother a few years back, Alice McKinley finds her life seriously disrupted when her father Ben buys a store and moves her and her older brother Lester to a new town.

A single mother and her slacker sister find an unexpected way to turn their lives around in this off-beat dramatic comedy. In order to raise the tuition to send her young son to private school the mom starts an unusual business – a biohazard removal/crime scene clean-up service.

Emotions run high when three estranged sisters reunite in a cramped New York City apartment to watch over their ailing father during his final days.

An estranged family gathers together in New York for an event celebrating the artistic work of their father.

Daphne is a young woman negotiating the tricky business of modern life. Caught in the daily rush of her restaurant job and a nightlife kaleidoscope of new faces, she is witty, funny, the life of the party. Too busy to realise that deep down she is not happy. When she saves the life of a shopkeeper stabbed in a failed robbery, the impenetrable armour she wears to protect herself begins to crack, and Daphne is forced to confront the inevitability of a much-needed change in her life.

A husband and wife reevaluate their marriage after their closest friends, another couple decide to split up after twelve years.

Erik Blake has gathered three generations of his Pennsylvania family to celebrate Thanksgiving at his daughter’s apartment in lower Manhattan. As darkness falls outside and eerie things start to go bump in the night, the group’s deepest fears are laid bare.

After graduating from film school, Aura returns to New York to live with her photographer mother, Siri, and her sister, Nadine, who has just finished high school. Aura is directionless and wonders where to go next in her career and her life. She takes a job in a restaurant and tries unsuccessfully to develop relationships with men, including Keith, a chef where she works, and cult Internet star Jed.

Jackie is a divorced mother of two. Isabel is the career minded girlfriend of Jackie’s ex-husband Luke, forced into the role of unwelcome stepmother to their children. But when Jackie discovers she is ill, both women realise they must put aside their differences to find a common ground and celebrate life to the fullest, while they have the chance.

When Eve, an interior designer, is deserted by her husband of many years, Arthur, the emotionally glacial relationships of the three grown-up daughters are laid bare. Twisted by jealousy, insecurity and resentment, Renata, a successful writer; Joey, a woman crippled by indecision; and Flyn, a budding actress; struggle to communicate for the sake of their shattered mother. But when their father unexpectedly falls for another woman, his decision to remarry sets in motion a terrible twist of fate…

After having visions of a member of her support group who killed herself, a woman who also suffers with chronic pain seeks out the widower of the suicide.

A resourceful 12-year-old, who secretly lives alone in her flat in a working-class suburb of London, makes money stealing bikes with her best friend Ali and keeps the social workers off her back by pretending to live with an uncle. But when her estranged father turns up out of the blue, she's forced to confront reality.

A peculiar neighbor offers hope to a recent widow who is struggling to raise a teenager who is unpredictable and, sometimes, violent.

After years of caring exclusively for the needs of her husband and children, Agnes, a devoted housewife living in a small town near New York, has found something she really enjoys doing: solving puzzles.

Between two Thanksgivings, Hannah's husband falls in love with her sister Lee, while her hypochondriac ex-husband rekindles his relationship with her sister Holly.

An uptight, conservative businesswoman accompanies her boyfriend to his eccentric and outgoing family's annual Christmas celebration and finds that she's a fish out of water in their free-spirited way of life.

A closeted young woman brings her girlfriend home for Thanksgiving, only to have her coming-out efforts thwarted by the unexpected arrival of her male roommate.

A divorced writer from the Midwest returns to her hometown to reconnect with an old flame, who's now married with a family.

A frustrated Boston detective searches for the maniac responsible for mutilating a number of university coeds.

Tom is a British chef in a Bondi restaurant who seems to have decided there are no longer any rules he needs to obey. Whatever Tom is up to, his actions seem to be tolerated by those around him. As Tom descends into darkness, fragments of a different story begin to emerge. All the women in his world are trying in their own, very different ways to help put him back together.

The life of a woman is transformed after she is diagnosed with a terminal disease, fired from her job and abandoned by her boyfriend. Given two months to live, she throws caution to the wind to pursue her dreams.

After experiencing a traumatic misfortune, Jasmine French, a wealthy woman from New York, moves to San Francisco to live with her foster sister Ginger and the firm purpose of getting a new life, but she will be haunted by anxiety and memories of the past.

A small New Mexican village discovers a severed hand that is considered a miracle of God, when it actually belongs to a murdered spouse with a husband in search of it.

The semi-autobiographical story centers on the complexities of love and commitment in a family torn apart when faced with an unexpected tragedy.

Jamie owns a sightseeing and tour company in the small town of Cooperville, New York. Navigating the holidays with enthusiasm is trickier for Jamie since her husband Matt passed. Matt loved Christmas and found unparalleled joy in giving to others. While reminiscing with family, Jamie realizes the town desperately needs someone with Matt’s genius for thinking of the small gestures that bring genuine happiness to the holidays.

Thirty-something Hillary Burns has spent her life trying to get the approval of her parents, in the shadow of her more successfully-attached siblings. So when Hillary's fiance, workaholic lawyer Jason King, dumps her because she isn't willing to relocate for his potential promotion, she panics because she had been promising to bring him home to meet her expectant family, whom she does not want to let down! As a last-minute idea, her best friend Sophie convinces her to actually hire someone to "play the role" of Jason for her return home on Thanksgiving.. leading to an interesting combination of sparks & revelations for all involved.

Retreating from life after a tragedy, a man questions the universe by writing to Love, Time and Death. Receiving unexpected answers, he begins to see how these things interlock and how even loss can reveal moments of meaning and beauty.

Valeria is 17 and pregnant. She lives in Puerto Vallarta with Clara, her half sister. Valeria has not wanted her long-absent mother, April, to find out about her pregnancy, but due to the economic strain and the overwhelming responsibility of having a baby in the house, Clara decides to call their mother. April arrives, willing to her daughters, but we soon understand why Valeria had wanted her to stay away.

A woman discovers that severe catastrophic events are somehow connected to the mental breakdown from which she's suffering.

Master chef Kate Armstrong runs her life and her kitchen with intimidating intensity. However, a recipe for disaster may be in the works when she becomes the guardian of her young niece while crossing forks with the brash sous-chef who just joined her staff. Though romance blooms in the face of rivalry, Kate needs to look outside the kitchen to find true happiness.

Kate Stone is career-focused with a brash attitude that keeps relationships at an arm's length. When her estranged brother calls asking her to baby-sit her tween niece Maddie, Kate reluctantly agrees to help. But baby-sitting overnight unexpectedly turns into a week, and Kate's life spins into chaos. As Maddie reveals stories of being bullied and of wanting to run away and be a Juggalo, the two form a unique bond.

Feeling forgotten on Mother's Day, three best friends leave the suburbs and drive to New York City to surprise their adult sons.

Aurora, a finicky woman, is in search of true love while her daughter faces marital issues. Together, they help each other deal with problems and find reasons to live a joyful life.

A man tries to warn his brother away from the new girlfriend he brings home during Thanksgiving, but ends up becoming infatuated with her in the process.

An on-the-lam punk rocker and a young woman obsessed with a local band go on an unexpected and epic journey together through the decaying suburbs of the American Midwest.

Amy, Kiki and Carla – three under-appreciated and over-burdened women – rebel against the challenges and expectations of the Super Bowl for mothers: Christmas. And if creating a more perfect holiday for their families wasn’t hard enough, they have to do all of that while hosting and entertaining their own mothers.

With John's social life at a standstill and his ex-wife about to get remarried, a down on his luck divorcée finally meets the woman of his dreams, only to discover she has another man in her life - her son. Before long, the two are locked in a battle of wits for the woman they both love-and it appears only one man can be left standing when it's over.

A unique friendship develops when a little girl and her dying mother inherit a cook - Mr. Church. What begins as an arrangement that should only last six months, instead spans fifteen years.

Brad and Kate have made something of an art form out of avoiding their families during the holidays, but this year their foolproof plan is about go bust -- big time. Stuck at the city airport after all departing flights are canceled, the couple is embarrassed to see their ruse exposed to the world by an overzealous television reporter. Now, Brad and Kate are left with precious little choice other than to swallow their pride and suffer the rounds.

A woman trying to recover from a sexual attack is locked in a posh apartment with a corpse of the very man she's been dreaming would murder her. She tries to hang on to reality when objects around her seem to come to life.

On the way to meet with an independent artist in the South, newlywed art dealer Madeleine is convinced by her husband, George, that they should stop to meet his family in North Carolina. Madeleine's affluent lifestyle clashes with the family, but she befriends George's wide-eyed and pregnant sister-in-law, Ashley, who is nearing her due date. Through the family, Madeleine gains greater insight into George's character.

Allison's life falls apart following her involvement in a fatal accident. The unlikely relationship she forms with her would-be father-in-law helps her live a life worth living.

While on Christmas break, college student Michael journeys to Quebec City to spend time with his attractive girlfriend, Gabriella. Not long after he arrives, Gabriella breaks up with him, but her two equally gorgeous sisters waste no time showing romantic interest. In the meantime, Michael is left to deal with Gabriella's eccentric grandmother and offbeat father, an academic who spends most of his time naked.

France, a factory worker, lives with her three daughters in Dunkirk. The factory where she worked has been closed, leaving France and all of her workmates without a job. She decides to go to Paris to look for work. There she finds a cleaning job at the home of a rich man, Steve, whose world is radically different from her own. As their paths keep crossing, she discovers that her employer played a part in closing the factory in Dunkirk...

A young grandmother in a small Pennsylvania town raises her daughter's child after the girl disappears. All the while, a desperate search for her continues.

Top student Jane Ryan heads to Manhattan for a college-scholarship competition. Her rebellious twin Roxy Ryan goes along to crash a video shoot. But anything can happen - and does - in a romp involving a pursuing truant officer, a smuggler, hunkalicious guys and the girls' realization that when the chips are down, a sister can be the best friend of all.

Tracey Berkowitz, 15, a self-described normal girl, loses her 9-year old brother, Sonny. In flashbacks and fragments, we meet her overbearing parents and the sweet, clueless Sonny. We watch Tracey navigate high school, friendless, picked on and teased. She develops a thing for Billy Zero, a new student, imagining he's her boyfriend. We see the day she loses Sonny and we watch her try to find him.

Aspiring New York City artist John Hollar returns to his Middle America hometown on the eve of his mother’s brain surgery. Joined by his girlfriend, eight months pregnant with their first child, John is forced to navigate the crazy world he left behind.

A family loaded with quirky, colorful characters piles into an old van and road trips to California for little Olive to compete in a beauty pageant.

Many loosely connected characters cross paths in this film, based on the stories of Raymond Carver. Waitress Doreen Piggot accidentally runs into a boy with her car. Soon after walking away, the child lapses into a coma. While at the hospital, the boy's grandfather tells his son, Howard, about his past affairs. Meanwhile, a baker starts harassing the family when they fail to pick up the boy's birthday cake.

A coming-of-middle-age comedy that chronicles the unlikely friendship between failed author Richard Dunne and a Long Island teen who teaches him a thing or two about growing up, all under the disapproving eye of his long-suffering wife and his imaginary Superhero friend.

When elderly mother Edna inexplicably vanishes, her daughter rushes to the family's decaying home, finding clues of her increasing dementia scattered around the house in her absence.

With their father away as a chaplain in the Civil War, Jo, Meg, Beth and Amy grow up with their mother in somewhat reduced circumstances. They are a close family who inevitably have their squabbles and tragedies. But the bond holds even when, later, male friends start to become a part of the household.

A young drug-addled writer approaching the bottom of his descent submits to two months of agonizing detox at a treatment center in Minnesota.

Faced with the decision of a lifetime, Arvilla Holden enlists her two best friends and sets off in a vintage '66 Bonneville convertible to deliver her late husband's ashes to Santa Barbara.

Told from the woman's perspective, the story of a couple trying to reclaim the life and love they once knew and pick up the pieces of a past that may be too far gone.

A regular guy struggles with a repressive home and professional life, as well as making amends for the trouble his free-spirited brother and sister cause about town.

A neurotic, twice-divorced sci-fi writer moves back in with his mother to solve his personal problems.

A young woman's plans to propose to her girlfriend while at her family's annual holiday party are upended when she discovers her partner hasn't yet come out to her conservative parents.

Introverted Don Johnston receives an anonymous letter from an ex-lover informing him that he has a son who may be looking for him. A freelance sleuth neighbor motivates Don to embark on a cross-country search for his past flames seeking answers.

When a man is diagnosed with terminal cancer, he takes custody of his misanthropic teenage son, for whom quality time means getting high, engaging in small-time prostitution, and avoiding his father.

Estranged from his family, Jonathan (Hedlund) discovers his father has decided to take himself off life support in forty-eight hours’ time. During this intensely condensed period, a lifetime of drama plays out. Robert (Jenkins) fights a zero sum game to reclaim all that his illness stole from his family. A debate rages on patients’ rights and what it truly means to be free. Jonathan reconciles with his father, reconnects with his mother (Archer), sister (Brown-Findlay), and his love (Adams) and reclaims his voice through two unlikely catalysts – a young, wise-beyond-her-years patient (Barden) and a no-nonsense nurse (Hudson). Through this intensely life affirming prism, an unexpected and powerful journey of love, laughter, and forgiveness unfolds.

Jackie-O is anxiously awaiting the visit of her brother home for Thanksgiving, but isn't expecting him to bring a friend — and she's even more shocked to learn that this friend is his fiance. It soon becomes clear that her obsession with Jackie Kennedy is nothing compared to her obsession with her brother, and she isn't the only member of the family with problems.

Owen and Isabel's love story simmers with spiteful rage and unfortunately for everyone, Isabel is pregnant with Owen's child. To prove to her that he can become a stable father, Owen agrees to reconnect with his only living relatives at Isabel's request. The couple take a trip to visit his perversely devoted grandmother and his sister Pearl, who was severely burned in a fire, to finally bury the hatchet. But sometimes the ties that bind can cut off all circulation.

A Madison Avenue executive, Amy, discovers an unusual Christmas surprise when she inherits her Aunt’s hometown bakery. The real surprise comes when she learns the other half of the bakery was left to her long-ago boyfriend, Jack. Unresolved personal issues resurface between them, as the exes return home to co-manage the store, along with its traditional holiday cookie bake-off.

After a Black Friday riot ends in tragedy, a mysterious Thanksgiving-inspired killer terrorizes Plymouth, Massachusetts - the birthplace of the holiday. Picking off residents one by one, what begins as random revenge killings are soon revealed to be part of a larger, sinister holiday plan.

When a lively young family moves in next door, grumpy widower Otto Anderson meets his match in a quick-witted, pregnant woman named Marisol, leading to an unlikely friendship that turns his world upside down.

A coming of age dramedy where infidelity, real estate, and Lyme disease have two families falling apart on Long Island in the early eighties. Scott, 15, is at the point in his life when he finds out that the most important people around him, his father, his mother, and his brother, are not exactly who he thought they were. They are flawed and they are human.

Tomas and Martin are a gay couple living in Paris whose marriage is thrown into crisis when Tomas impulsively begins a passionate affair with young schoolteacher Agathe. But when Martin begins an affair of his own, Tomas must confront life decisions he may be unprepared—or unwilling—to deal with.

Sue works in a library. Daniel eats crisps and listens to Metallica. This was the summer Daniel was due to spend with his father and his father's new wife in Florida. But when they cancel his trip at the last minute, Sue and Daniel suddenly face the prospect of six long weeks together.

Four women, whose kids attend the same preschool class, get together for a "fun mom dinner". When the night takes an unexpected turn, these unlikely new friends realize they have more in common than just marriage and motherhood.

Following the death of their friend, two girls in their late twenties embark on a road trip to spread his ashes. Seph and Alex take turns driving. Dan is in the glove compartment, in tupperware, decreasing in volume as the trip progresses.

Jamie hasn’t told his family that he and his now ex-girlfriend Emily broke up. After an inopportune run-in with Emily at the train station in his hometown, Jamie convinces her to pretend they’re still a couple to avoid ruining Christmas for his family.

A drama focused on the friendship between a high-functioning autistic woman and a man who is traumatized after a fatal car accident.

A career woman reassesses her parents' lives after she is forced to care for her cancer-stricken mother.

Ten years after their divorce, Jane and Jake Adler unite for their son's college graduation and unexpectedly end up sleeping together. But Jake is married, and Jane is embarking on a new romance with her architect. Now, she has to sort out her life—just when she thought she had it all figured out.




