Manila in the Claws of Light

A story about the life of a young girl living with her mother in the slums of Manila, which becomes unbearable when her mother's young boyfriend moves in with them.

Looking for a brighter future in metropolitan Manila, Oscar Ramirez and his family leave their miserable life in the rice terraces of Banaue, in the northern Philippines. In the sweltering capital, where all kind of perils lurk in every corner, Oscar catches a lucky break when he is offered a steady work for an armored truck company and the senior officer Ong takes him under his wing.

Three people — a blue-collar American, a French journalist and a London school boy — are touched by death in different ways.

King is a young man, but he's already a veteran of life on the streets of Los Angeles. The de facto leader of a group of teenage runaways, King acts as a mentor to troubled kids such as gay hustler Little J and junkie Greg. When Heather, a beautiful girl from Chicago, starts hanging out with King and his crew, it changes the dynamic of the gang. However, it seems as though nothing will alter their dangerous lifestyle.

A young man of Chinese-Cambodian descent dies, leaving behind his isolated mother and his lover of four years. Though the two don't share a language, they grow close through their grief.

In the aftermath of his girlfriend's mysterious death, a young man awakens to strange horns sprouting from his temples.

Gentle and broken, a homeless man fights others on video for money but soon finds comfort in an unlikely friend and the lost diary of a young girl.

After Margaret, a divorcée living in Dublin, loses her teenage son, she develops an unorthodox relationship with Joe, a homeless youth. Their tentative trust is threatened by his involvement with a violent gang and the escalation of her ex-husband's grieving rage.

A creative and driven teenager is desperate to escape his hometown and the haunting memories of his turbulent childhood.

A troubled engineer faces pressure at work and problems at home with his moody wife. American expat Chuck, rescues him from the brink of despair and becomes an unlikely mentor.

Behrani, an Iranian immigrant buys a California bungalow, thinking he can fix it up, sell it again, and make enough money to send his son to college. However, the house is the legal property of former drug addict Kathy. After losing the house in an unfair legal dispute with the county, she is left with nowhere to go. Wanting her house back, she hires a lawyer and befriends a police officer. Neither Kathy nor Behrani have broken the law, so they find themselves involved in a difficult moral dilemma.

After three decades' wrongful incarceration for murder, a woman discovers that her friend and fellow inmate committed the murder of which she was accused. This leads to her release and subsequent discovery of the man who framed her — her ruling class ex-lover.