I 1928 er Los Angeles' politi præget af korruption og magtmisbrug. Det opdager Christine Collins, da hendes søn Walter en dag forsvinder sporløst. Fem måneder senere annoncerer politiet, at Walter er fundet i god behold. Desværre er det ikke sandt - for drengen, som Christine får hjem, er ikke hendes søn. Men politiet bryder sig ikke om negativ omtale, og da Christine gør opmærksom på, at drengen ikke er Walter, bliver mareridtet kun værre.

Mobster "Baby Face" Martin returns home to visit the New York neighborhood where he grew up, dropping in on his mother, who rejects him because of his gangster lifestyle, and his old girlfriend, Francey, now a syphilitic prostitute. Martin also crosses paths with Dave, a childhood friend struggling to make it as an architect, and the Dead End Kids, a gang of young boys roaming the streets of the city's East Side slums.

Alejandro, a tough and ambitious Latino street orphan on the verge of adolescence, lives and works in an auto-body repair shop in a sprawling junkyard on the outskirts of Queens, New York. In this chaotic world of adults, young Alejandro struggles to make a better life for himself and his 16-year-old sister, Isamar.

It's 1875 and a young street urchin wants to see Queen Victoria...

Since the fall of the Iron Curtain an estimated four million children have found themselves living on the streets in the former countries of the Soviet Union. In the streets of Moscow alone there are over 30,000 surviving in this manner at the present time. The makers of the documentary film concentrated on a community of homeless children living hand to mouth in the Moscow train station Leningradsky. Eight-year-old Sasha, eleven-year-old Kristina, thirteen-year-old Misha and ten-year-old Andrej all dream of living in a communal home. They spend winter nights trying to stay warm by huddling together on hot water pipes and most of their days are spent begging. Andrej has found himself here because of disagreements with his family. Kristina was driven into this way of life by the hatred of her stepmother and twelve-year-old Roma by the regular beatings he received from his constantly drunk father. "When it is worst, we try to make money for food by prostitution," admits ...

Karesz has been raised in an institution, his mother has a new family, and her husband does not tolerate that she meets her first-born son. Karesz tramps, joining up with his casual pals he washes the windscreens of cars, sells newspapers; sometimes they steal, or break into houses if hired.

Badou Boy, a cheeky young man, travels through the streets of Dakar on the city buses and experiences adventures.

BEPPIE is a moving and disarming portrait of an Amsterdam street urchin. Van der Keuken once described her as follows: 'She was ten years old and the joy of the Achtergracht, where I was living at the time. An Amsterdam child, sweet and crooked as a corkscrew.' He films her while she skims the city with some friends and knocks at strangers' doors. Her family has nine children and is not well off. In those days, a visit to the De Miranda swimming pool cost a quarter, but only ten cents if the weather was bad. At school, Beppie gets a poor mark because she is too boisterous, but when the whole class rattles off the multiplication tables, she joins in at the top of her voice. All of TV-watching Holland was wildly enthusiastic about this portrait, with which Van der Keuken even made the front page of the national newspaper De Telegraaf.

In the search for a single good person in the province of Sezuan, three gods finally find only poor street girl Shen Te, whom they reward with a large gift of money. Now wealthy, Shen Te is now so exploited by all men that she has no choice but to slip into the shoes of her hard-hearted cousin, Shui Ta. Accused of murdering the missing Shen Te, the supposed Shui Ta confesses his dual role and the gods avoid a conviction. But Shen Te aka Shui Ta is now abandoned by all humans and also by the gods – helpless in the world.