TV Times

Bringing the cinematic marvel of an American independent filmmaker, internationally acclaimed movie ‘Maria Full of Grace' will be screened at the American Center at 6.30 pm on Tuesday, August 8.

The debut direction by the American filmmaker John Marston Spanish-language film (with English subtitles) was nominated for the Best Actress (Catalina Sandino Moreno) at 2005 Academy Film Festival. The film depicts a drama about a Columbian drug mule, Catalina Sandino Moreno who stars as a factory worker and decides to smuggle a stomach full of smack past US customs to start a new life.

Winner of the Dramatic Audience Award at Sundance and two major awards at the Berlin Film Festival, 'Maria Full of Grace' is not only a hard-hitting jab at the global economic system that allows exploitation of the poor to satisfy the pleasure of the rich, but a richly nuanced coming-of-age story that delivers its hard-edged message with understanding and compassion.

Shot in documentary style with a hand-held camera in Ecuador and New York, the film's authenticity is greatly enhanced by its use of Columbian actors speaking in their native Spanish language.

In a small village in Columbia, the pregnant seventeen year old Maria (Catalina Sandino Moreno) supports her family with her salary working in a floriculture. She is fired and with a total lack of perspective of finding a new job, she decides to accept the offer to work as a drug mule, flying to USA with sixty-two pellets of cocaine in her stomach. Once in New York, things do not happen as planned.

In Joshua Marston's small budget film Maria Full of Grace, a headstrong Columbian girl of seventeen (Catalina Sandino Moreno), is determined to escape from a country where the average annual income is about $1700 US, seizes an opportunity to earn $5000 by ingesting and transporting illegal drugs to New York at considerable risk to herself and her unborn child. Inspired by a woman in his Brooklyn neighborhood who told him her story of swallowing capsules of heroin and boarding a plane for the United States, first-time director Marston has escaped the clichés of social realist films to offer a riveting human odyssey that transcends simplistic messages of good and evil.

The film stars Catalina Sandino Moreno, Guilied Lopez, Patricia Rae, Orlando Tobon, John Álex Toro and Yenny Paola Vega.