María Álvarez (Catalina Sandino Moreno) is a young worker at a cut flower plant in Colombia. She quits her job but her family needs the money. She's pregnant and turns down the baby father's proposal. She hitches a ride to Bogotá and recruited into being a drug mule. Her friend Blanca insists on also being a mule. They get to NYC but one of the other girl is killed. The girls run off into the strange city with the drugs.

The story is harrowing. Almost all of the movie depends on how one perceive Catalina Sandino Moreno's performance. She's taller than most and the prettiest of them all. She's like a dressed down model. She also plays the character rather hard-edged. She's a tough character. I can't help but think that a more sweeter persona would elicit more heart-wrenching moments. This is a compelling story but I imagine it could be even more compelling.

In a small village in Colombia, the pregnant seventeen years 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 approx. seventy pellets of cocaine in her stomach. Once in New York, things do not happen as planned.

"Maria Full of Grace" is a very powerful and real movie about the lack of perspective in the life of teenagers in poor countries. The dramatic story takes place in Colombia and is based on real events, the use of poor people to transport drugs to United States of America. Once there, the poor adolescent sees a chance to join to the American Dream and give a better life to her unborn child and make money to send to her family. In my country, mules are not the problem, but the use of children, protected by law, by the dealers in the traffic of drugs. The story is very well written, and the movie has a stunning direction. Catalina Sandino Moreno has awesome performance and this film really deserves the nomination for Oscar and another twenty-seven (27) wins and twenty-one (21) nominations in Festivals. The title plays with the Catholic prayer "Ave Maria". My vote is nine.

Title (Brazil: "Maria Cheia de Graça" ("Maria Full of Grace")

While we have usually seen an image of Colombia as the country where cocaine reigns supreme. "Maria Full of Grace" shows something slightly different. While drugs do play a role, we get to see people's daily lives and see that individuals do try to live normal lives in spite of the country's drug wars. The plot has pregnant 17-year-old Maria Alvarez (Catalina Sandino Moreno) agreeing to be a "mule", carrying drug pellets in her stomach. She does this, but things don't work out quite as anyone expects.

I'm sure that most people in Colombia are not dealing drugs; the revolutionary groups and the government have been fighting each other since 1964, and both sides target the common citizens. But like I said, this movie shows the lives of the common people in Colombia. And not that this is related, but Catalina Sandino Moreno is really pretty.