How far would you go to conquer the American dream? Maria (Catalina Moreno), a young Columbian factory worker is tired of giving her paychecks to her mother and single mother sister. Headstrong and beautiful and far from sacrilegious, she opts to be a mule in a drug deal. The pellets contain heroine. Each weighs 10 grams. Each is 4.2 cm long and 1.4 cm wide. And they’re on their way to New York in the stomach of this 17-year-old girl. The film is based on a thousand drug stories but the human complexity of this personal tale, rivets you to your seat as you hope Maria will get there and back unharmed. But unlike a studio film where they’d say ‘there’s no way this could happen’ (as events unfold), the charm of this independent movie is that sometimes things resemble reality more than an overly-tinkered script concerned with pure box office profit. The story has no superior position for the audience. We only know what Maria knows and go as she goes along. You’ll walk out of the theatre having unexpected sympathy for illegal immigrants. And you’ll think twice that a Columbian teen is much as rebellious as an American one. The difference: the American one has choices.
