Motif focuses on a police investigation and its most obvious innovation is the female perspective that the director imposes. Protagonist Dewi (Sharifah Amani) is a police officer who is sent from the capital of Kuala Lumpur to a provincial area, Tanah Merah (lit. “Red Earth”), to investigate the disappearance of the young daughter of the local community’s richest family. From the beginning, her arrival is greeted with distrust by her male colleagues, who are doubly annoyed by the fact of having an outsider who is also a woman intrude in the community.

The story of Almayer, a Dutch trader struggling to survive in Malaysia at the turn of the 19th Century. His dream of finding a mythical gold mountain is challenged by his scheming wife, the colonial authorities, the political machinations of the local chief and Arab traders, and his daughter's love for a freedom-fighting Malay prince.

The Arsonist involves the struggles of an undocumented immigrant family and a boy's coming-of-age. The son Kesuma must forge his own identity against the intimidating presence of his father Kakang, a man proud of his Javanese heritage and well aware of the social inequalities that allow his exploitation. Kakang counteracts by torching the property of those who slight him, leaving Kesuma simultaneously proud, fearful and ashamed. A clash of wills is all but inevitable. The film climaxes in a poignant conflagration, literal and metaphorical.

Mamat is a native of Kelantan, Malaysia, but he had left Malaysia many years earlier to join his brother Lazim in South Thailand in order to continue making his living as a trainer of fighting bulls (a Jogho). The practice had been outlawed in Malaysia but continued in Thailand. Mamat lives with his wife and three daughters, three divorcees and one who has not yet married, but he has sent his only son to boarding school in Kelantan. Mamat and Lazim are the leaders in a small village that depends mostly on the money won from gambling in bullfights for its sustenance. The story begins when Lazim is killed by Isa at the bullfighting arena.

Azizah and Ramli’s relationship is objected by Azizah’s father. It is fueled by Aziz’s badmouthing them to Azizah’s father. Ramli takes it as a challenge and leaves to work in Singapore so that he can save enough money to marry Azizah. He is still rejected by Azizah’s father even after all the success he has made.

"Penghujung Malam" explores the lives of a husband and wife conflict of Razak and Sopiah. Although already married and had a daughter named Norita, Sopiah seemed to forget his responsibilities. Sopiah giddy with other guys cause Razak Sopiah bored and left and went to Indonesia.

Zaiton seduces a drifter named Amran into murdering her elderly husband, Ibrahim, to get his money and land.