In the elder days of Joshua Marston,
Filmers wrought with greatest care
Each minute and unseen part;
For the Gods see everywhere.
- after H.W. Longfellow
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Sundance Film Festival: Audience Drama Award.
Berlin Film Festival: Catalina Sandino Moreno tied with Charlize Theron (Monster) for Best Actress, Best First Film (Joshua Marston).
Seattle Film Festival: Best Actress (Catalina Sandino Moreno).
Maria (Catalina Sandino Moreno, see footnote) lives close enough to Bogota, Columbia that she can go easily by bus or on her boyfriend's motorbike. She works locally in a sweatshop stripping the thorns off flowers before they're packaged. It's boring, and since she has to give almost all of her earnings to support her mother and sisters in a fatherless family, discouraging as well. Then she gets pregnant, has a fight with her nasty boss, quits her job, moves to Bogota where by chance she gets the opportunity to earn lots of money as a drug mule.
The rest of Maria Full of Grace tells straightforwardly, frighteningly yet compassionately about Maria and the mule train from Columbia to New York; finally about the Latin immigrant experience in the great USA.
Maria Full of Grace is a wonderful film, without pretension or guile, both terrifying and warm on the human level.
Many of the actors are real immigrant denizens of New York. All are good. First time Director Joshua Marston has wrought with care to bring us this nerve and heart wracker. Perhaps he might have made Maria into a bit more of a heroine - but then he'd have messed with the utter realism.
Born in Bogota, Columbia in 1981, Catalina Sandino Moreno became interested in theatre and stage at an early age. In 1997, while still in high school, she enrolled in the Ruben Di Pietro theatre academy in Bogota. During her four years at the academy, she acted in such productions as Acuerdo para Cambiar de Casa by Griselda Gambaro, The Dark Room by Tennessee Williams, and Laughing Wild by Christopher Durang. After making her film debut in Maria Full of Grace, Moreno moved to New York City and attended The Lee Strasberg Institute. She recently made her New York stage debut in The Frog & Peach Theatre Company's production of Shakespeare's King John.
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