from Latino Leaders: The National Magazine of the Successful American Latino, August-September 2004 / by Kerri Allen

If smuggling talent into the US is a felony, then Catalina Sandino Moreno is in trouble. The 23-year old colombiana crept onto American movie screens this July with the feature film Maria Full of Grace (Maria Llena Eres De Gracia) after being chosen from more than 800 actors to play the title role. Writer and director Joshua Marston’s harrowing film about a teenage girl ensnared in the world of drug smuggling may have handed Sandino a permanent visa to Tinsel Town.

In 2002, Catalina Sandino Moreno was well on her way to a career in radio advertising when a college buddy told her about a local movie audition. A sometimes theater student content with her life in Bogota, Sandino was reluctant to go. She remembers asking, “Why are they going to pick me for a movie?” Urged by her mother and friends to try anyway, Sandino gave a screen test that instantly captivated director Marston. She signed on to the project, hardly knowing where it would lead–or where it would even play. “I knew it was a great opportunity for me, but I never thought it was going to be so big,” Sandino recalls. “I thought it was going to be on TV, not in theaters!”

Maria Full of Grace was indeed in theaters, captivating audiences worldwide and tacking up awards from continent to continent. The Audience Award winner at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, Maria also brought Sandino the Berlin Film Festival’s Best Actress award (an honor for which she tied Oscar-winner Charlize Theron). The film won six awards at the Cartagena Film Festival and will travel to France in the coming months. But the touching story ultimately belongs to Sandino’s homeland.

The tremulous odyssey of 17-year-old “Maria Alvarez exposes the realities of drug smuggling in Colombia. “Marston’s initial aim was “to look at what it is to be a drug mule and try to imagine it from that person’s perspective and begin to understand what would propel somebody to do this.” Based on “1,000 true stories,” the movie was shaping up to be quite dark and harsh. After Sandino got on the set, though, the story began to evolve. “We developed a script that was less and less about a drug mule and more and more about a young woman trying to break out and kick against a world that seemed to be pressing in on her,” says Marston.

As Maria Alvarez’s world was pressing in, Catalina Sandino’s was expanding. Since wrapping up Maria Full of Grace, Sandino has relocated to New York City and appeared in various off-Broadway plays, “all while wading through heaps of Hollywood scripts. So what’s up next for the South American starlet? Unlike the impetuous and complex character she embodied so well, Sandino is simply patient. “I have to wait for that next good script. I’m not rushing.”