MAYNILA: SA MGA KUKO NG LIWANAG

“Manila in the Claws of Light” is a descent to the first circle of hell […] that of social alienation, particularly hard for Julio, a fisherman from a poor but almost Adamic world. The Dante of the suburbs and building sites, Brocka sows the path of his hero with black pebbles: fatal accidents in the construction site, fights that tragically predict his desire to kill, a rugged engraving of the circles of male prostituition. And, forever in our memory, the vision of the epitome of Dante’s Beatrice, taken from her family by an old lady on the false pretext of sponsoring the girl’s studies, though actually sold at high prices to a Chinese tradesman.
(Gilles Gourdon, Cinématographe 77, 1982)