With a backdrop of the Balkan Wars of the 1990s, Lana (Oksana Orlenko) and Darko (Nickolai Stolivov), brother and sister, flee Bosnia, arrive in a freighter car at the seaport in Baltimore, and make their way to Chicago. The Windy City gives them a chilly reception. Although thousands of miles away from Eastern Europe, Darko is still a wanted man, with his former partners in crime out to kill him.

Looking for a way to survive and taking advantage of Lana’s innocence, Darko tricks her into becoming a prostitute. First, it’s a "date" where your "lover" leaves you money after the sex, and later it’s "get the money up front," before anything is unzipped or clothes are removed. It’s easy to see why Oksana won the best actress award at the Milan Film Festival. Lana’s conflict comes from the relationship with her brother and her desire to blend into America’s melting pot. Darko, like his name implies, has demons that may never leave him.

In "House of Sand and Fog," Ben Kingsley’s character of Behrani, an Iranian immigrant, was able to maintain a measure of dignity and self-respect. Unlike Darko, Behrani was able to hold his head high even when he was working at minimum wage, menial jobs. Irish immigrants in the film "In America," brought with them skills as a schoolteacher and an actor. And though they were not able to use those tools to support their family, again they had dignity and liked what they saw when they looked in the mirror. "Lana’s Rain" connects more to the reality of Spike Lee’s "25^th Hour" and Neil Jordan’s "The Good Thief," with Nick Nolte and Nutsa Kukhianidze. In both of those films, there were young women who were ruled by unscrupulous men that pretended to care for them. A pimp can be someone who pretends they care (such as the father and pimp in "Chaos"), whether a punk in a gang or your very own brother.

This low budget film, written, directed and edited by first time Chicago filmmaker Michael S. Ojeda, is an impressive debut effort. It has a polished look, with lots of action. Some of the action is over the top, which detracts from the gritty reality of life for new immigrants. To most Chicagoans these people are invisible. They exist in the tough, fringe neighborhoods, with the beautiful buildings of downtown in the background as some type of Promised Land; and here it’s culture, language and money rather than the Atlantic Ocean, which separates them. Fortunately for Lana, she had the inner strength to battle the demons that would enslave her and set herself free.