Julio Madiaga goes to the capital to look for his long lost love. As he witnesses life on the streets, where death strikes without warning and corruption is commonplace, his search leads to a radical shift in his character—from a naive country boy to an angry young man thirsting for justice.

The director of more than 60 features, most of them still unseen in the West, Lino Brocka was a defining voice in Filipino cinema. Manila in the Claws of Light is his breakout masterwork: a noir-inflected, neorealist scurry through the tough streets of the capital in the years of the Marcos regime.