Two elderly matriarchs bear the consequences of a crime involving their grandsons: One is murdered, the other is the suspect. As the intense financial strains of a burial and legal case weigh on both women, they individually traipse around the prisons, funeral homes, and courtrooms of Manila amidst torrents of rain, while simultaneously struggling to maintain their families' lives in the makeshift shacks built along the city's rising waterways. Face-to-face with each other, they work together to reach a common, if compromised, resolution.

Capturing the desperate and frantically beautiful texture of the urban Manila landscape, Lola confirms the depth and range of Filipino director Brillante Mendoza's vision. Anita Linda and Rustica Carpio deliver incisive performances as the two determined leads in writer Linda Casimiro's penetrating critique of the criminal justice system, its accompanying bureaucracy, and the incomplete quest for justice and reconciliation.