Winner of the Dramatic Audience Award at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival and two major awards at the Berlin Film Festival, this film is one woman's journey from a small Colombian town to the streets of New York. A bright, spirited 17-year-old, Maria Alvarez (Catalina Sandino Moreno) lives with three generations of her family in a cramped house in rural Colombia and works stripping thorns from flowers in a rose plantation. The offer of a lucrative job involving travel - in fact, becoming a drug 'mule' - changed the course of her life. Far from the uneventful trip she is promised, Maria is transported into the risky and ruthless world of drug trafficking. Her mission becomes one of determination and survival and she finally emerges with the grace that will carry her forward into a new life.