In St. Petersburg, Florida, seven-year-old Mary Adler, a mathematical genius, lives with her uncle and de facto guardian, Frank. Her best friend is her 43-year-old neighbor, Roberta Taylor. Frank, a former philosophy professor and now boat mechanic, feels strongly that Mary should attend a normal elementary school so she can have a normal childhood. In first grade, Mary shows remarkable mathematical talent, which impresses her teacher, Ms. Stevenson. It emerges that Mary's mother, Diane, had been a promising mathematician, dedicated to the Navier–Stokes problem (one of the unsolved Millennium Prize Problems) before taking her own life when Mary was six months old. Mary has lived with Frank ever since. Despite Mary's initial disdain for average children her own age, and her boredom with their classwork, she begins to bond with them when she brings her one-eyed cat, Fred, for show-and-tell. Later, she defends a classmate from a bully on the school bus. The principal, having discovered Mary's math talent, encourages Frank to send Mary to a private school for gifted children, offering the opportunity of a scholarship. Frank turns it down, based on his family's experiences with similar schools. The principal contacts Frank's estranged mother and Mary's maternal grandmother, Evelyn. Evelyn, a former mathematician herself, believes that people with capabilities such as Mary's have an obligation to use their talents to help further society, and feels that Mary should be specially tutored in preparation for a life devoted to mathematics, as Diane was. But Frank is adamant that his sister would want Mary to be in a normal school and have the childhood she did not have. Evelyn sues Frank for full custody. While she is on the stand in court, it is revealed that not only did Evelyn homeschool Diane, she kept her socially isolated, so that she could be completely focused on mathematics. When Diane and her teenage boyfriend ran away to a ski resort, Evelyn filed a lawsuit and threatened to charge him with kidnapping, forcing him to cut ties with Diane. Diane attempted suicide for the first time shortly after, something Evelyn argues was an isolated incident. When Frank takes the stand, he admits working at a low-paying job without health insurance. His lawyer, worried that the judge will side with Evelyn due to her financial resources, convinces Frank to take a deal orchestrated by Evelyn's lawyer. Mary is placed in foster care, where she can attend the private school. Evelyn waits until her 12th birthday, when she will be able to decide where she wants to live. The foster parents live near Frank, and he is entitled to scheduled visits. Mary is devastated and refuses to see Frank when he tries to visit. Thanks to a tip from Ms. Stevenson, Frank rescues Mary's cat Fred from the pound moments before he is about to be put down. Frank realizes that Evelyn, who is allergic to cats, is overseeing Mary's education in the guest house of the foster home. Frank goes to the foster home and reconciles with Mary. He informs Evelyn that Diane had completed the Navier–Stokes problem, but left instructions for Frank not to publish the solution until after Evelyn's death, revealing Diane's deep resentment towards her mother. Frank offers Evelyn the opportunity to publish Diane's work if she drops her custody case, to which she reluctantly agrees. Mary is placed back in Frank's custody, living a normal public-school childhood while taking college-level courses in her spare time. Frank is also implied to have returned to his philosophy roots.

In Dorchester, Boston, private investigator Patrick Kenzie and his partner and girlfriend Angie Gennaro witness a televised plea by Helene McCready for the return of her abducted four-year-old daughter Amanda, who was last seen with her favorite doll, Mirabelle. Amid the media frenzy, Amanda's aunt Bea and uncle Lionel hire the pair to find her. Patrick and Angie meet with Boston Police Department detectives Remy Bressant and Nick Poole, who tell them about Corwin Earle, a known child molester whom they consider a suspect. Patrick asks a criminal associate, Bubba, to look for Earle and also discovers that Helene and her boyfriend Ray are addicts and drug mules for local Haitian drug lord Cheese, and had recently stolen $130,000 from him. After finding Ray has been murdered by Cheese's men, Patrick and Angie join Remy and Nick to find Amanda, whom they now believe has been taken by Cheese. Helene reveals she buried the money in Ray’s backyard and tearfully makes Patrick promise he will bring Amanda home alive. Patrick meets with Cheese and tries to negotiate returning the stolen money in exchange for Amanda, but he denies any involvement in the girl's disappearance. The following day, Captain Jack Doyle reads Patrick a telephone transcript of Cheese calling the station to set up an exchange for the girl. The exchange at a nearby quarry is botched after a gunfight breaks out, and Cheese is killed. It is believed that Amanda fell into the quarry's pond and drowned; Angie retrieves Mirabelle and returns it to Helene. Doyle, whose own daughter was killed years before, takes responsibility for the botched exchange and goes into early retirement. Two months later, a seven-year-old boy is abducted in Everett, a city near Boston, and Patrick receives information from Bubba that Corwin Earle is living with two married cocaine addicts. The two visit the house and Patrick observes evidence of the abducted boy, so he returns with Remy and Nick late at night to rescue him. Before they can enter the house, the woman starts shooting and fatally wounds Nick before chasing Patrick into Corwin's room. He discovers the dead child and executes Corwin as Remy arrives and kills the woman. The following evening, an intoxicated Remy tries to alleviate Patrick's guilt, confiding that he once planted evidence to help a family escape from an abusive husband. When Remy discloses that Ray was the one who told him about the abusive husband, Patrick becomes suspicious, as Remy had previously said that he did not know Ray. Following Nick's funeral, Patrick speaks to police officer Devin, telling him that Remy lied to him about knowing Ray. Devin tells him Remy knew about Cheese's stolen money before Cheese did. Patrick goads Lionel into meeting him in a bar and pieces together that he and Remy had staged a fake kidnapping to keep the drug money for themselves and to teach Helene a lesson, which Lionel finally admits. Remy enters the bar wearing a mask and stages a robbery. Patrick realizes it is just a ruse to kill them, so he yells about Remy's involvement in Amanda's kidnapping. The bartender shoots Remy, but he flees, pursued by Patrick, and succumbs to his injuries. While being questioned, Patrick realizes Doyle's involvement when he is told the police do not use phone transcripts. Arriving at Doyle's house, Patrick and Angie find Amanda alive and well. He admits his part in the kidnapping and setting up the fake exchange to frame Cheese. When Patrick threatens to call the police, Doyle tries to convince him that Amanda would have a better life with him and his wife than with her neglectful mother. Patrick discusses the choice with Angie, who says she will hate him if he returns Amanda to her mother, making the case that the girl would grow up much safer and happier if they leave her to be raised by Doyle and his wife. However, he makes the call regardless. Doyle, his wife, and Lionel are arrested, and Patrick and Angie break up. Patrick later visits Helene as she is preparing for a date. On discovering she has not arranged for a babysitter, he volunteers. After she leaves, Patrick sits down with Amanda and asks about Mirabelle, but is told her name is Anabelle. Realizing Helene does not even know the name of her daughter's favorite doll, Patrick is left to wonder whether returning Amanda to her mother was a mistake.

Nutan "Newton" Kumar, a rookie government clerk on reserve is sent on election duty to a Naxal -controlled town in the insurgency -ridden jungles of Chhattisgarh, India, when one of the main duty officers there is found to be facing heart problems. Faced with the apathy of the war-weary Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) security forces, led by Assistant Commandant Aatma Singh, and the looming fear of guerrilla attacks by communist insurgents, he tries his best to conduct free and fair voting despite the odds stacked against him. He is disappointed when the voters do not turn up for the election. Later when a foreign reporter turns up at the polling station, the CRPF force the villagers from the constituency to turn up to cast their votes. When one of the villagers enters the polling booth, he is bewildered by the voting machine and does not understand how to operate it. After talking to the villagers, Newton soon realizes that they have no idea what the election is about. Some thought they would earn money from this, while others asked hopelessly about getting paid sufficiently for their work. He desperately tries to educate them but to no avail. Taking the lead, a frustrated Aatma Singh cuts off Newton aside and shames the villagers by telling them that these officers have risked their lives for their vote, and they should not turn them away. He tells them that the voting machine is a toy; there are symbols of elephants, cycles, etc. and they could press any symbol they like (leaving them uneducated about the fact that those symbols represent respective political parties). So while they vote for their favorite symbol, instead of politicians they have never heard about, the foreign reporter gets a good news report about India's democracy. Newton wants to sit at the polling booth for the stipulated time but is forced to flee due to a Naxal ambush, which he later realizes was actually staged by the CRPF. Upon learning this, he tries to outrun his escort team back to the polling booth, but gets caught on both sides, and is forcibly taken back to safety. On the way back, Newton decides to collect the votes of four villagers who suddenly turn up from deep inside the forest. Aatma Singh is reluctant to let them do so. Taking his duty very seriously, Newton steals Aatma Singh's rifle and holds the officer at gunpoint till the villagers cast their votes. Singh comments out of frustration that he did not want polling to be conducted in an area that was only secured by government forces 6 months ago, mentioning that there are still more landmines there than men. He tells Newton that he does not want to lose any more troops, especially when the government cannot even supply them with night vision goggles that they have been requesting for 2 years. Newton keeps him at gunpoint even after the voting for the remaining two minutes of his official duty (till 3 pm). The CRPF troops then beat him up out of frustration. The film concludes with a shot of the area six months later, showing mining activity going on. Aatma Singh is shown shopping in civilian dress with his wife and daughter during holidays, suggesting he is a human and conditions in Naxal-affected areas made him a dispassionate and cynical person. Newton is shown in his office wearing a neck brace for his injury from the beating but otherwise happy, and keeping with his old ways. He is visited by the local election officer Malko who asks him what happened after she left as she is unaware of the events and Newton asks her to tell everything over tea, but only after five minutes, when Newton's scheduled lunch break begins.

London-based journalist Martin Sixsmith has lost his job as a government adviser. He is approached at a party by the daughter of Philomena Lee. She suggests that he write a story about her mother, who was forced to give up her toddler son Anthony nearly fifty years ago. Though Sixsmith is initially reluctant to write a human interest story, he meets Philomena and decides to investigate her case. In 1951, Philomena became pregnant after having sex with a man she did not know at a county fair, so was sent by her father to Sean Ross Abbey in Roscrea in Ireland. After giving birth, she was forced to work in the convent laundry for four years, with little contact with her son. The nuns gave her son up for adoption without giving Philomena a chance to say goodbye. She kept her lost son a secret from her family for nearly fifty years. Martin and Philomena begin their search at the convent. The nuns claim that the adoption records were destroyed in a fire years earlier; they did not, however, lose the contract she was forced to sign decades ago forbidding her from contacting her son, which Martin considers suspicious. At a pub, the locals tell Martin that the convent burnt the records deliberately, and that most of the children were sold for £1,000 each to wealthy Americans. Martin's investigation reaches a dead end in Ireland, but he receives a promising lead from the United States so invites Philomena to accompany him there. His contacts help him discover that Anthony was renamed Michael A. Hess, who became a lawyer and senior official in the Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations. When Philomena notices Martin in the background of a photo of Michael, he remembers that he met him years earlier while working in the US. They also learn that he has been dead for eight years. Philomena decides she wants to meet people who knew Michael to learn more about him from them. Visiting a former colleague of Michael's they discover that Michael was gay and died of AIDS. They also visit his 'sister' Mary, who was adopted at the same time from the convent, and learn that they were both emotionally and physically abused by their adoptive parents, and hear about Michael’s partner, Pete Olsson. After avoiding Martin's attempts to contact him, Pete agrees to talk to Philomena. He shows her some videos of his life with Michael. To Martin and Philomena's surprise, they see footage of Michael, dated shortly before he died, at the Abbey where he was adopted, and Pete explains that, although he never told his family, Michael had privately wondered about his birth mother all his life, so had returned to Ireland in his final months to try to find her. Pete informs them that the nuns had told Michael that his mother had abandoned him and they had lost contact with her. He also reveals that, against his parents' wishes, he had Michael buried in the convent's cemetery. Philomena and Martin return to the convent to ask where Michael's grave is. Despite Philomena's pleas, Martin angrily forces his way into the private quarters and argues with an elderly nun, Sister Hildegarde McNulty, who worked at the convent when Anthony was forcibly adopted. He accuses her of lying to Anthony and denying him the chance to finally reunite with Philomena, purely out of self-righteousness. Hildegarde is unrepentant, saying that losing her son was Philomena's penance for having sex out of wedlock. Martin demands an apology, telling her that what she did was un-Christian, but is speechless when Philomena instead chooses to forgive her of her own volition. She then asks to see her son's grave, where Martin tells her he has chosen not to publish the story. Philomena tells him to publish it anyway.

The film follows Kaspar Hauser, who has lived the first seventeen years of his life chained in a tiny cellar with only a toy horse to occupy his time, devoid of all human contact except for a man wearing a black overcoat and top hat, who feeds him. One day, in 1828, the same man takes Hauser out of his cell, teaches him a few phrases, and how to walk, before leaving him in the town of Nuremberg. Hauser becomes the subject of much curiosity, and is exhibited in a circus before being rescued by Professor Georg Friedrich Daumer, who patiently attempts to transform him. Hauser soon learns to read and write, and develops unorthodox approaches to logic and religion; but music is what pleases him most. He attracts the attention of academics, clergy and nobility. He is then physically attacked by the same unknown man who brought him to Nuremberg. The attack leaves him unconscious with a bleeding head. He recovers, but is again mysteriously attacked; this time, stabbed in the chest. Hauser rests in bed describing visions he has had of nomadic Berbers in the Sahara, and then dies. An autopsy reveals an enlarged liver and cerebellum.

Note: The film lacks a conventional narrator, and assumes (or at least benefits from) familiarity with the story of Christ. In Roman Galilee, the local Jewish community lives in poverty. Although the Romans are formally in charge, the Jewish upper class—including King Herod and the Pharisee religious elite—dominates the locals on a day-to-day basis. The pregnant Mary has a troubled relationship with Joseph, who worries she cheated on him. Joseph reconciles with Mary after an angel tells him that God caused Mary's pregnancy. After Mary bears Jesus Christ, the magi visit the baby Jesus. The angel tells the family to flee to Egypt. Herod—who fears a prophecy that Jesus will become king of the Jews —brutally massacres the region's infants. The family return to Judea after Herod dies. Many years later, John the Baptist preaches a brazenly anti-establishment message to the commoners of Galilee. Jesus visits John to be baptized, and God appears to them. Satan offers Jesus wealth and power, but Jesus declines. Jesus recruits a band of disciples. He warns them that "I came not to bring peace, but a sword" and that they will suffer on his behalf. He travels around the country with his disciples, healing the blind, raising the dead, exorcising demons, and proclaiming the arrival of the Kingdom of God and the promised salvation. The film rapidly canvasses his parables and sayings, including the Sermon on the Mount, in a series of montaged monologues. Meanwhile, the new king imprisons John the Baptist before capriciously executing him to impress his stepdaughter. Jesus is generally uncomfortable showing his divine power in public (with the exception of the miracle of the loaves and fishes). He prefers to preach radical messages to working-class crowds and children. The wealthy are alienated by Jesus's socially conscious teachings, the religious elite are threatened by his contempt for their legalism and hypocrisy, and even commoners are concerned with his asceticism. Matthew is wounded when Jesus chooses Peter over him to lead the church, but accepts Jesus's decision. Although the public—which wants to see the supernatural— initially ignores Jesus, he attracts a large following and triumphantly enters Jerusalem to cheering crowds. The Roman army is called in for crowd control and beats several followers of Jesus. After Jesus claims to be the Jews's prophesied Messiah, the chief priests plot to murder him. Judas Iscariot betrays Jesus after Jesus scolds him in front of the other disciples. During the Agony in the Garden, Jesus accepts his fate, which he has long known. The chief priests organize a mob to arrest Jesus. The apostles rise to defend him, but Jesus insists on surrendering peacefully. The chief priests hand Jesus over to the Romans. Fearing a similar fate, Peter denies Jesus three times. After escaping, he breaks down crying. Judas commits suicide after realizing even the priests are disgusted by his treachery. The Roman governor, Pilate, declares Jesus innocent but executes him anyway to placate the chief priests. Mary buries her son. After three days, Jesus rises from the dead and instructs his disciples to spread the gospel throughout the world.

In Marseille, a man is shadowing Alain Charnier, who runs a heroin-smuggling syndicate. Charnier's hitman, Pierre Nicoli, murders the man. Charnier plans to smuggle US$ 32 million (equivalent to $ 189 million in 2025) worth of 89% pure heroin into the United States by hiding it in the car of his unsuspecting friend, television personality Henri Devereaux, who is traveling to New York City by ship. In Brooklyn, police detectives Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle dressed as Santa Claus and Buddy "Cloudy" Russo stake out a bar known for drug trafficking. They later go out for drinks at the Copacabana. Popeye observes Salvatore "Sal" Boca and his wife, Angie, entertaining mobsters involved in narcotics. They tail the couple and establish a link between the Bocas and Joel Weinstock, a financier in the narcotics underworld. Popeye learns that a shipment of heroin will arrive soon. The detectives convince their supervisor to wiretap the Bocas' phones. Popeye and Cloudy are joined by federal agents Mulderig and Klein. Devereaux's vehicle arrives in New York City. Boca is in a hurry to make the purchase, but Weinstock urges patience, knowing they are being surveilled. Charnier realizes he is being surveilled as well, identifies Popeye as a detective, and escapes on a departing subway shuttle at Grand Central Station. To evade Popeye, he has Boca meet him in Washington, D.C., where Boca asks for a delay to avoid the police. Charnier wants to conclude the deal quickly. On the flight back to New York City, Nicoli offers to kill Popeye, but Charnier says Popeye would just be replaced by another policeman. Nicoli insists, however, saying they will be back in France before a replacement is assigned. Soon, Nicoli attempts to snipe Popeye in Brooklyn but hits a bystander. Popeye chases Nicoli, who boards an elevated subway train. Popeye shouts to a policeman on the train to catch Nicoli and then commandeers a passing car. He gives chase, crashing into several vehicles on the way. Realizing he is being pursued, Nicoli shoots the policeman who tries to intervene and hijacks the train at gunpoint, shooting the conductor while forcing the motorman to drive through the next station. The motorman suffers a heart attack, and the train stop engages before it rear ends another train, hurling Nicoli to the floor. Popeye arrives and sees Nicoli descending from the platform. Nicoli sees Popeye and turns to run, but Popeye shoots him dead. After a long stakeout, Popeye impounds Devereaux's Lincoln. In a police garage, mechanics tear the car apart in a search for drugs, initially coming up empty-handed. Cloudy discovers that the car's weight was recorded at 120 pounds over its standard, implying that the contraband must still be in the car – packages of heroin are finally discovered beneath the rocker panels. The car is reassembled, despite being nearly destroyed, and returned to Devereaux who delivers it to Charnier. Charnier drives to an old factory on Wards Island, where Boca's brother Lou works, to meet Weinstock and deliver the drugs. After Charnier has the rocker panel covers removed, Weinstock's chemist tests one of the bags and confirms its quality. Charnier removes the drugs and hides the money inside the rocker panels of another car purchased at a junk car auction, which he plans to take back to France. Charnier and Sal drive off in the Lincoln, but a large contingent of police led by Popeye blocks their path. The police chase the Lincoln back to the factory, where Boca is killed by Cloudy during a shootout. Most of the other criminals surrender. Charnier escapes into a nearby abandoned bakery with Popeye and Cloudy in pursuit. Popeye sees a shadowy figure in the distance and opens fire too late to heed a warning, killing Mulderig. Undaunted, he tells Cloudy he will get Charnier. He reloads his gun and runs into another room. A single gunshot is heard. Title cards describe various characters' fates: Weinstock was indicted, but his case was dismissed for "lack of proper evidence"; Angie Boca received a suspended sentence for a misdemeanor; Lou Boca received a reduced sentence for conspiracy and possession of narcotics; Devereaux served four years in a federal penitentiary for conspiracy; Charnier was never caught and is believed to be living in France. Popeye and Cloudy were transferred out of the Narcotics Bureau and reassigned.

Outside Paris, a woman dumps a corpse in the river. The body is identified by Dr. Génessier as his daughter Christiane, who was reported missing after an automobile crash disfigured her face. In reality, Christiane still lives in Dr. Génessier's mansion next to his private clinic, guarded by German Shepherds and other large dogs. The body (which was disposed of by his assistant Louise) belongs to a young woman whose facial skin Dr. Génessier removed and unsuccessfully attempted to graft onto his daughter. After her father leaves with promises to restore her face, Christiane, wearing a mask to cover her disfigurement, calls her fiancé, Jacques Vernon, Dr. Génessier's assistant, but hangs up without saying a word. Génessier's next victim is Edna Grüber, a young woman whom Louise befriends and lures to Génessier's mansion with an offer of a room for rent. Génessier sedates Edna with chloroform, and he and Louise carry her to the lab to prepare her for surgery, secretly watched by Christiane. Later, he removes Edna's facial skin and grafts it onto Christiane's face. The heavily bandaged and faceless Edna attempts to escape but falls to her death from an upstairs window. After disposing of Edna's corpse, Génessier notices the new tissue is rejected within days, and Christiane has to wear the mask again. She phones Jacques and says his name, but Louise interrupts the call. Jacques informs the police, who have been investigating the disappearance of young women with similar facial characteristics. Jacques realizes one of the girls looks like Louise. Inspector Parot instructs Paulette Mérodon (recently arrested for shoplifting) to check herself into Génessier's clinic. Soon after, Paulette is picked up by Louise and delivered to Dr. Génessier. Before he begins surgery on Paulette, the police arrive. While the doctor talks with the police, Christiane, disenchanted with her father's immoral experiments, while slowly losing her mind from guilt and isolation, decides to act. She frees Paulette and murders Louise by stabbing her in the neck. She also frees the dogs and doves that her father uses for experiments. Dr. Génessier dismisses the police (who readily accept his explanations) and returns to his lab. There, a newly acquired German Shepherd attacks him, inciting the other dogs to follow suit, mauling him to death. Christiane, unmoved by his death, strolls out into the woods outside with a dove in her hands.

David Kim lives in San Jose, California with his daughter, Margot. His wife, Pamela, was diagnosed with lymphoma and died before Margot entered high school. David calls Margot who says she is with a study group and will be there all night. That same night, Margot attempts to call David three times, but he is asleep. The following day, David is unable to contact Margot. Believing she is attending her piano lesson, David calls the instructor, but is told that Margot canceled her lessons six months earlier. He finds a phone for her friend Isaac and finds out from Isaac's mom that he and some friends, including Margot, are on a camping trip in the mountains. Once Isaac reaches out to him he finds out that Margot never made it on the trip with her friends prompting him to call and file a missing person's report. The case is assigned to Detective Rosemary Vick. Through her social media accounts, and after speaking with "friends" of Margot David learns she isn't really close with any of the friends and Margot has become a loner since Pamela's death. He discovers she pocketed and transferred $2,500 to a now-deleted Venmo account. Vick reports Margot made a fake ID and shows traffic camera footage of her car outside the city, suggesting she may have run away. Unconvinced, David discovers Margot had been using a streaming site called YouCast, and befriended a young woman named Hannah. Vick reports Hannah's innocence, having been sighted in Pittsburgh at the time of the disappearance. From Margot's Tumblr account, David notices she frequently visited Barbosa Lake near the highway where she was last seen. He finds her Pokémon keychain there, and the police discover her car in the lake, which contains an envelope with $2,500. A search party is organized, but a storm delays the operation. After David has an altercation with a boy who claims to know Margot's whereabouts, Vick tells him he can no longer participate in the investigation. Undeterred, David visits TMZ, which displays the crime scene photographs, and notices his brother Peter's jacket. He discovers text messages between Margot and Peter that suggest an incestuous relationship. Upon confrontation, Peter explains they were only smoking marijuana and confiding in each other. He chastises David for being negligent towards Margot, who is still grieving Pamela's death. Vick calls David and tells him an ex-convict named Randy Cartoff confessed to raping and killing Margot before committing suicide. An empty-casket funeral is arranged for Margot. As David uploads photos to a funeral streaming site, he notices the website's stock photograph features a picture of Hannah. Discovering she is a stock model, he contacts her, and she reveals that she does not know Margot and that the police never called her. Talking to a police dispatcher, David learns that Vick was not assigned to the case but volunteered. He discovers she knew Cartoff through a volunteer program for ex-convicts. Reporting this to the sheriff, David confronts Vick, who is arrested at the funeral. Vick agrees to confess, in exchange for leniency for her son, Robert. Having a crush on Margot, Robert used the YouCast account under the name Hannah to get close to her. Margot sent money to Robert's Venmo account, believing he was a working-class girl whose mother had cancer. Ashamed for lying, Robert wanted to return the money in person and followed her to Barbosa Lake to reveal himself. He surprised her by getting into her car, and she ran, with him accidentally pushing her off a cliff into a 50-foot-deep ravine. Assuming the accident was fatal and could be perceived as manslaughter or even first-degree murder, Vick decided to cover up the incident, pushing the car into the lake and fabricating the fake ID evidence to make it look like Margot ran away. After David found the car, Vick turned Cartoff into the fall guy and staged his confession. Vick says that Margot is still in the ravine, suggesting that even if she had survived the fall, she could not have lived five days without water. David tells the police to return to the ravine, remembering the storm on the third day of the search, which could have provided her with water. The rescue crew finds Margot severely injured but alive. Two years later, Margot applies for college to major in piano. David tells her Pamela would have been proud of her. Margot changes her desktop picture from one of Pamela and her to the one David sent her of the two of them in the school hallway after the rescue, reflecting a closer relationship between them.

In early April 1923, near the end of the Irish Civil War, on the fictional isle of Inisherin (lit. ' the island of Ireland '), fiddler Colm Doherty abruptly begins ignoring his lifelong best friend and drinking buddy Pádraic Súilleabháin. When a hurt Pádraic presses Colm for an explanation, he says that Pádraic is too dull, and he would rather spend the remainder of his life composing music and doing things for which he will be remembered. Pádraic is devastated and refuses to accept the situation, while Colm only becomes more resistant to his old friend's attempts to make amends, eventually giving Pádraic an ultimatum: every time Pádraic talks to him, Colm will cut off one of his own fingers. The local Garda, Peadar Kearney, beats his troubled son Dominic severely for drinking his poitín, and Pádraic and his sister, Siobhán, take Dominic in for a night. While delivering milk to the market, Pádraic is insulted by Peadar and retaliates by making public the fact that Peadar abuses his son. Peadar punches him to the ground. Having witnessed this, Colm drives Pádraic home; the two do not speak. Siobhán and Dominic try to defuse the pair's feud, to no avail. Pádraic drunkenly confronts Colm and berates him for throwing away their friendship, as well as for drinking with Peadar, whom he publicly accuses of molesting Dominic. After Siobhán leads Pádraic away, Colm says that this is the most interesting Pádraic has ever been, which Dominic overhears. The next morning, not remembering what he has said, Pádraic attempts to apologise to Colm, but the conversation goes badly. Colm responds by cutting off his left index finger and throwing it at Pádraic's door. Pádraic later sees Colm meeting with Declan, a fiddler from the mainland. Jealous, Pádraic tricks Declan into returning home by lying that his father was hit by a bread van. As the tensions worsen, local elder Mrs McCormick warns Pádraic that death will come to the island soon. Dominic tells Pádraic what Colm said about him in the pub; encouraged, Pádraic tells Dominic what he did to Declan, but Dominic, disappointed, rejects him as mean and refuses to speak to him anymore. Thereafter, Siobhán sympathetically rejects Dominic's romantic advances. Pádraic gets drunk and starts another confrontation with Colm at Colm's house; Colm says he has finished composing his song ("The Banshees of Inisherin") and seems finally open to renewing their friendship, but Pádraic drunkenly reveals what he did to Declan. Instead of meeting Pádraic at the pub, Colm cuts off all four of his remaining left fingers and throws them at Padraic's door. Fed up by the feud and long bored with life on the island, Siobhán moves to the mainland for a job in a library. Devastated, Pádraic comes home to find his pet donkey Jenny has choked to death on one of Colm's fingers. He confronts Colm at the pub; Colm offers a truce, but an embittered Pádraic informs him that he will burn his house down the next day at 2 pm. At the promised time the next day, Pádraic does so; he looks in a window and sees Colm calmly sitting inside. Pádraic takes Colm's dog Sammy with him to save him from the fire. Peadar watches Pádraic burn down the house, and as he rushes to Pádraic's house to confront him, he encounters Mrs McCormick, who leads Peadar to Dominic's corpse in the lake. After returning home, Pádraic writes a letter to Siobhán that says Jenny is doing well and glosses over his lonely, friendless life. The next morning, Pádraic takes Sammy back and finds Colm, who survived the fire, standing on the beach beside his burnt-out house. Colm apologises for the donkey's death and suggests destroying the house has ended their feud; Pádraic replies that it would have ended only if Colm had stayed inside. Colm wonders whether the Civil War is coming to an end; Pádraic replies he is sure the fighting will begin again soon because "some things there's no moving on from", adding that he thinks that is "a good thing" before leaving. Unbeknownst to either, Mrs McCormick silently watches them from the remains of Colm's house.