La Vendedora De Rosas

Story Line

Victor Gaviria (Rodrigo D, No Futuro) directed this drama of street kids in
Colombia, a modernization of Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Match Girl
focusing on 13-year-old Monica (Leidy Tabares) who sells roses to couples
in nightspots. Smoking pot and sniffing glue, Monica hangs out with other street
run aways and her dealer boyfriend. During a drug fantasy, she hallucinates about
her dead grandmother. When 10-year-old Andrea (Mileider Gil) gets a beating, she
runs out on her mother and steals her sister's inline skates for cash, but she
eventually rejects life on the street and returns home. A hand-held camera moves
through the nighttime streets where the glitter of Christmas decorations and an
illuminated Madonna stand amid the squalor and poverty.
Shown in competition at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival.

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