GOLD

In the heart of the metropolitan yet conservative city of Lahore lives the Rana family, a lower middle class joint family comprising of the old patriarch, the elder son and pregnant wife with three daughters, and the youngest son Haider and his wife Mumtaz. As the Rana’s eagerly anticipate the birth of a baby boy to continue their family line, Haider secretly takes up a job as a background dancer at an erotic theatre where he is drawn to an ambitious trans starlet, Biba. Slowly yet suddenly, Haider and Biba are engulfed in a secret summer romance which surreptitiously takes over his home, unraveling the dichotomy between desire and morality for the entire Rana family.

Dalva, 12, lives only with her father. One evening, the police storms into their home and takes her into foster care. As Dalva befriends her new roommate Samia and social worker Jayden, she gradually comes to understand the love she shared with her father was not what she thought. With their help, Dalva will learn to become a child again.

Alicia had “the perfect life” and lost it. Her six-year-old son died in an accident. Her grief is plagued by guilt, which has made her disassociate from society, from married life, and from herself. She now lives in the Old Quarter of Panama, a rich colonial enclave surrounded by Panama’s poorest neighbourhoods. There she meets Chief, a street-smart 13-year-old who takes care of cars in front of her apartment and insists on getting paid for his job. Alicia keeps a safe distance from him, until one night Chief arrives at Alicia’s apartment bleeding from a gunshot wound and begs her to let him inside. How far would you go to help a stranger?

Cáit is a nine-year-old girl from an overcrowded, dysfunctional and impoverished family. Quietly struggling at school and at home, she has learnt to hide in plain sight from those around her. As summer arrives and her pregnant mother’s due date approaches, Cáit is sent to live with distant relatives. Without knowing when she will return home, she is left at the strangers’ house with only the clothes she is wearing. The Kinsellas, a middle-aged couple she has never met, dress the girl in whatever clothes they have. They are farming people, like her own, but hard-working and wanting for nothing, it seems. Despite a warm reception from the woman, Eibhlín, the man of the house, Seán, keeps his distance from Cáit and she from him, but over time, their strained relationship begins to deepen. Slowly, in the care of the Kinsellas, Cáit blossoms and discovers a new way of living. But in this house where affection grows and there are meant to be no secrets, she discovers one painful truth.