Free Radicals is comparable to Magnolia by Paul Thomas Anderson and Short Cuts by Robert Altman, but Barbara Albert is both more compassionate and more detached towards her characters in this film. Main character Manu is the sole survivor of a plane crash in the Amazon on her way home from a vacation in Brazil. Six years later Manu is still trying to adjust to her hometown life when she is involved in a serious car accident. In Free Radicals we are told stories of Manu, her friends, relatives and the group of teenagers in the other car, without the characters ever having met, but still leaving the impression that we are all somehow interconnected.