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Joshua Marston’s feature debut Maria Full of Grace introduces us to an extraordinary heroine, a spirited young woman whose desire for a brighter future leads her into a world of unimaginable dangers. As it follows Maria Alvarez from a Colombian flower plantation to the streets of New York, Maria Full of Grace vividly conveys the texture and detail of this young woman’s life, from the most ordinary moments to the most harrowing. It takes us inside an experience most of us know very little about, yet its focus remains always on Maria, a complex young woman in complex circumstances. Like Maria, we have no idea where events will lead; because of Maria, we care very much. In her award-winning film debut, Catalina Sandino Moreno gives a vibrant performance that captures Maria in all her strengths, flaws and contradictions.
Filmmaker Joshua Marston brought several longtime interests to bear in making his feature film debut, including an interest in other cultures and in the immigrant experience in the United States. Marston’s Brooklyn neighborhood is home to many émigrés from Colombia, and he has followed the country’s politics and internal affairs, including the long-running civil war. “As a filmmaker, my approach is to reach outward and find compelling people, places and stories, and then, to listen,” Marston says. “That sort of anthropological focus is how I came to filmmaking and why I want to tell stories.”
Marston heard from Colombians about the lives they had left behind and the lives they lived now. One day, he spoke to a woman who had swallowed heroin capsules and transported them to the U.S., only to be arrested and imprisoned. The subject of drug trafficking had been raised before, but this was a first-hand account from a hidden world. Says Marston, “It was a story that I hadn’t ever seen, and I’d certainly never seen it told from the point of view of someone who’s actually done it. That was one of the original inspirations for the film: to look at what it is to be a drug mule and try to imagine it from that person’s perspective. To begin to understand what would propel somebody to do this.”
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