Mar%C3%ADa Candelaria

Mara Candelaria is a 1944 Mexican film directed by Emilio Fernndez and starring Dolores del Ro and Pedro Armendriz. It was the first Mexican film to be screened at the Cannes International Film Festival where it won the Grand Prix now known as the Palme dOr becoming the first Latin American film to do so. Mara Candelaria would later win a Silver Ariel award for Best Cinematography.

A young journalist presses an old artist Alberto Galn to show a portrait of a naked indigenous woman that he has in his study. The body of the movie is a flashback to Xochimilco, Mexico, in 1909. The film is set right before the Mexican Revolution, and Xochimilco is an area with beautiful landscapes inhabited mostly by indigenous people.The viewer learns that the woman in the painting is Mara Candelaria Dolores del Ro, a young Indian woman who is constantly rejected by her own people for being the daughter of a prostitute. She and her lover, Lorenzo Rafael Pedro Armendriz, face constant struggles throughout the film. They are honest and hardworking, yet nothing ever goes right for them. Don Damian Miguel Incln, a jealous Mestizo store owner who wants Mara for himself, prevents them from getting married. He kills a piglet that Mara and Lorenzo plan to sell for profit and he refuses to buy vegetables from them. When Mara falls ill with malaria, Don Damian refuses to give the couple the quinine medicine necessary to fight the disease. Lorenzo breaks into his shop to steal the medicine, and he also takes a wedding dress for Mara. Lorenzo goes to prison for stealing, and Mara agrees to model for the painter to pay for his release. The artist begins painting a portrait of Mara, but when he asks her to pose nude she refuses. ........

Source: Wikipedia