Set in a domestic noir world of Los Angeles' Manhattan Beach in the 1940s, "Where Light Is a Place" is a lyrically devastating and inspiring portrait of a young girl coming of age and of a family in crisis.
It's 1948 and 12-year old Palmer McNeil's world of sand, sea, and Saturday matinees is not as idyllic as it seems: tar and polio lurk at the beach, a molester stalks the movie theater, earthquakes rumble, and treacherous rip tides reach for swimmers.
Inside her family's dilapidated beach shack, dwindling finances, the hallucinatory terrors of her mother's alcoholic delirium...