Mary full of grace

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Movie
German title Mary full of grace
Original title Maria Full of Grace
Maria, llena eres de gracia
Country of production Colombia , USA
original language Spanish , English
Publishing year 2004
length 97 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Joshua Marston
script Joshua Marston
production Paul S. Mezey ,
Jaime Osorio Gómez
music Leonardo Heiblum ,
Jacobo Lieberman
camera Jim Denault
cut Anne McCabe ,
Lee Percy
occupation

Maria Voll der Gnade (English original title: Maria Full of Grace , Spanish Maria, llena eres de gracia ) is a Spanish-language feature film from 2004. The multi-award-winning drama was directed by the American Joshua Marston , who also wrote the screenplay wrote. The US production companies HBO Films , Journeyman Pictures and Santa Fe Productions produced the film together with the Colombian Proyecto Tucan . The title is a quote from the Catholic Ave Maria .

In Maria full of grace, Catalina Sandino Moreno plays a Colombian teenager who smuggles drugs into the USA using body packing .

action

The 17-year-old Colombian Maria earns her living as a simple worker in a flower factory. The attractive girl tries to break out of the sadness of her everyday life. Misunderstood by her grandmother and older sister Diana, she begins a liaison with her work colleague Juan. Maria becomes pregnant, no longer fulfills the quota in the factory and vomits on the roses that she is supposed to remove. Denounced by the foreman, she quits her job in the factory, which earns her the anger of her grandmother and sister, as the only regular income is lost and Maria has to pay for the medication for Diana's sick baby. However, the termination brings her respect in her circle of friends around Juan and her work colleague and best friend Blanca. When she tells Juan about her pregnancy, he offers her to marry her. But Maria doesn't want to live in her boyfriend's ten-person household, while Juan refuses to move in as a husband in his future wife's home. In addition, neither she nor he loves her. With the fate of her sister in mind, who is raising her child alone, Maria plans to look for work with a friend in the capital Bogotá . But on the way there she meets Franklin, whom she knows only briefly. The young man compliments her and impresses her. He offers her a job as a " mule ": Maria is supposed to smuggle cocaine into the USA in her body . Franklin can allay your initial concerns. He introduces her to the drug smuggler Javier. Javier likes Maria. During the first conversation he offers her an advance payment. She's supposed to ship the drugs to New Jersey . On the way back home, Maria meets Lucy, who has already made two transports to the USA. Lucy had moved to New York to visit her sister, whom she hadn't seen in four years, but so far she has only made it to her front door.

Maria's advance goes into her little niece's medication. She hides the origin of the money and her new job from her family and her best friend Blanca, but she suspects the lucrative work. She too has agreed to work as a mule so that she can buy a house for her family. Lucy prepares the two for the flight. Maria is not supposed to eat anything 24 hours before departure. It should transport between 60 and 70 packets of drugs. Your life is in danger as cocaine can kill you if a packet opens in your digestive tract.

In the back room of a pharmacy, Maria receives drugs that slow her digestion. After the first unsuccessful attempts, she swallows fifty packets. Javier gives her $ 800 in cash, a passport, the name of the hotel she will be staying in for a week, and the plane tickets. He threatens that he could harm her family if she cheats on the dealers.

Maria boards the plane with Blanca, Lucy and another courier to spread the risk of arrest. Soon she will struggle with problems. Her digestion rejects several of the drug packets and Maria has to swallow them again in the airplane toilet. Lucy also has problems on her third flight. She sweats and does not feel well. Maria tries to calm her down. Another problem arises when Maria discovers that she has forgotten the address of the New York hotel. Lucy helps her and notes down her sister's address.

On the John F. Kennedy International Airport arrived, Maria become the target of the airport police. Although she makes Lucy's story about her sister her own, the US authorities do not believe her. While a courier is being used by the investigators, Maria's pregnancy saves her from an X-ray that would expose her as a drug smuggler. Released shortly afterwards, Maria is met by Javiers' American contacts, who take Blanca, Lucy and her to a hotel room. Lucy's condition is not improving. Obviously one of her packages burst. She is later taken away by the two drug smugglers. When Maria discovered a lot of blood in the bathroom, she fled the hotel room with Blanca and the drugs. They make their way to Lucy's sister Carla in Queens, where they are, however, in front of a locked door. There is an argument between the two girls. Blanca disappears and only Maria meets the sister and her husband after hours of waiting. Maria leaves the couple in the dark about the circumstances surrounding their visit. She is allowed to spend a few days in the family's cramped apartment; one day later, Blanca also joins them. In Colombia, the drug traffickers have not yet contacted Maria's family, she is relieved to learn.

Maria, against Blanca's will, confides in Don Fernando, who, at Carla's behest, is to find work for the two girls. There is another argument between the two, Maria explores New York alone and finally goes to a Spanish-speaking gynecologist. It is the first ultrasound that Maria has had. She can hear the baby's heartbeat, it hasn't been harmed. A little later, however, she found out from Don Fernando that a body had been found; Lucy, who had died of an overdose, was found with her stomach cut open. Maria doesn't dare tell Carla about her sister's death. She enjoys life in the USA and admits that she cannot imagine raising her child in Colombia. When Don Fernando informs Carla about the death of Lucy a little later, the women fall out. Maria and Blanca then deliver the capsules in full to Javier's contact men, who annoyedly hand over their wages to the girls, but withhold Lucy's wages despite Maria's objection. A short time later, Maria attends the funeral of her deceased friend, which she co-finances, where she meets again the stunned Carla, who cannot believe that she was so estranged from Lucy. At the New York airport only Blanca boarded the plane back to Colombia. Maria takes Carla's words to heart, says goodbye to her friend and decides to start a new life in the USA.

History of origin

Director Joshua Marston realized his first feature film with Maria full of grace . Until then, he had only released a short film in 1999. He spoke to Colombian immigrants in New York and learned the story of a young woman who smuggled drugs into the USA as a “mule”. His further research took place in prisons with victims and with employees of the Drug Enforcement Agency as well as with employees at Los Angeles Airport . He wanted to get to know the life of teenage girls in Colombia and Ecuador by traveling to the countries and interviewing local residents. When he finished the script, he showed it to a few US production companies who loved it but less so that it was in Spanish. He only found a producer on the pay-TV channel HBO .

The casting in Latin America made difficulties for the director, as the experienced actors there mainly played in soap operas and accordingly had an exaggeratedly dramatic style of playing. After casting hundreds of young women, the then twenty-one year old Catalina Sandino Moreno, who had no previous acting experience, auditioned and was given the role because it matched the image that Joshua Marston had of Maria.

The film was shot from August 4 to September 8, 2003 in 35 mm format and some with a handheld camera . The scenes set in Colombia but not in Bogotá were filmed in Ecuador . Originally they wanted to film the scenes in Colombia, but due to the presidential elections taking place at the same time, an insurance company made difficulties, so they moved to Ecuador.

reception

sales

On January 18, 2004, the film was shown at the Sundance Film Festival , which is considered the most important festival for independent films . The following February he was seen in the competition at the 2004 Berlin International Film Festival . In the following time it was shown at numerous other film festivals. On April 2nd of the year Mary came full of grace in the Colombian cinemas and was seen there around 315,000 times by December 2005. The US theatrical release took place on August 16. There the film was able to record a gross profit of approximately 6.5 million US dollars . The low-budget film is said to have grossed 12.5 million US dollars worldwide.

While Maria was full of grace in the cinemas in Switzerland (around 56,500 visitors), Austria (around 4,600) and France (around 300,000) between August and December 2004, the film was only closed in German cinemas on April 21, 2005 see. In Germany he was seen about 80,000 times.

criticism

Almost all of the critics received Mary positively with full grace . The main actress and the director in particular received a lot of recognition for their realistic approach to the subject. Roger Ebert wrote in the Chicago Sun-Times on July 30, 2004 that Mary of Grace was "an extraordinary experience for many reasons, including, oddly, a willingness to be ordinary."

German-speaking critics also praised the film. For example, the film-dienst said: "Thanks to its immensely expressive leading actress and the self-assured staging that dispenses with dramatic effects, the film achieves its goal of humanizing a highly political situation." The magazine called the film a cinema tip from Catholic film critics .

Awards

At the Sundance Film Festival, the film was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize and received the Audience Award . At the 2004 Berlin International Film Festival , Joshua Marston was awarded the Alfred Bauer Prize and Catalina Sandino Moreno, together with Charlize Theron (for monsters ), was awarded the Silver Bear for Best Actress . The film won the International Jury Award at the 2004 São Paulo International Film Festival , Catalina Sandino Moreno won the Actress Award at the Seattle International Film Festival , the Jury Award at the Newport International Film Festival , and the Los Angeles IFP / West Film Festival the Audience Award and at the American Film Festival in Deauville the Audience Award, the Critics Award and the Grand Special Award.

At the 2005 Academy Awards , Catalina Sandino Moreno was nominated for Best Actress . This made her the first Colombian woman to receive an Academy Award nomination and the first actress for a role who speaks only Spanish. While the film was also considered Colombia's entry for an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film , it was deemed too un-Colombian and withdrawn. Instead, they sent José Antonio Dorados El Rey .

The film received a nomination in the category Best Non-European Film for the European Film Award . Independent Spirit Awards went to Catalina Sandino Moreno for Best Actress and Joshua Marston for Best Screenplay Debut . In addition, the film was nominated in the categories of Best Director , Best Picture and Best Supporting Actress ( Yenny Paola Vega ). The film was nominated for Best Newcomer Presentation (Sandino Moreno), Best Newcomer Filmmaker (Marston), and Best Foreign Language Film at the Online Film Critics Society Awards . Sandino Moreno was awarded the prize. She was also honored with the Premio ACE , a prize for Latin American films, and with many other awards, such as the Breakthrough Award at the Gotham Awards . The Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Newcomer went to Marston and Sandino Moreno. The latter was also nominated for the Screen Actors Guild Award .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Certificate of release for Mary full of grace . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , February 2005 (PDF; test number: 101 648 K).
  2. ↑ a b Interview in the taz
  3. ↑ a b cut: Mules in America by Sascha Seiler
  4. ↑ a b Interview in the standard
  5. ^ Box Office Mojo
  6. ↑ Lumiere
  7. ↑ Filmstarts.de
  8. ↑ Chicago Sun-Times
  9. ↑ Dirk Jasper FilmLexikon ( Memento from October 13, 2006 in the Internet Archive )

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