The best Ryan Cooley’s movies

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.

Mahree Bok lives on a farm in South Africa. Her father is a policeman who cannot hide his joy when activist Steve Biko is caught by the South African authorities. Piper Dellums is the daughter of a US congressman from California and who lives in a nice home in Washington DC. When Mahree is chosen to spend a semester at the Dellums' house, she doesn't expect that her host family would be black. Nor do her hosts suspect that she is not a black South African.

An Avonlea Christmas pays tribute to the indomitable and sometimes intolerable matriarch of the King family, Hetty King. When she suddenly collapses during the holidays, Hetty is hospitalized. Feeling homesick and alone, she begins to re-evaluate her relationships and her accomplishments in life. The story takes place against the backdrop of World War I as the King family prepares for its traditional Christmas dinner. The reunion is marred by the fact that one of its youngest members, Felix, is missing in action; making differences of opinion about the war effort glaringly obvious. This wonderful and accomplished cast comes together in an uplifting drama that illustrates the frailty of life and the importance of strength of family in turbulent times. (from DVD liner notes)