Little Saints (1999)

Based on the novel by María Amparo Escandón. After the widowed Esperanza loses her daughter, Blanca, to a rare virus, she searches her faith for an explanation. When St. Jude appears to her in her oven and tells her that her daughter is still alive, Esperanza convenes with her priest, who agrees that it must be a sign.

Despite her roommate's protest, she continues to search for her daughter. The doctor who treated her daughter at the hospital disappears a day after Blanca dies. After being caught while trying to dig up her daughter's grave and being visited by St. Jude twice more, Esperanza becomes convinced her daughter was kidnapped and sold as a sex slave. She believes her daughter is at a brothel in Tijuana. She travels north across Mexico to find her daughter. After a long bus trip, during which she is robbed, she arrives in Tijuana. In order to find her daughter, Esperanza must become a a prostitute. After unveiling some unseemly secrets in the brothel in Tijuana, but failing to find her daughter, she sets out for Los Angeles. In Los Angeles, she continues the search for her daughter. She meets a masked wrestler and falls in love with him while trying to find her daughter. After a sign from the Virgin Mary, Esperanza decides to return home. Cartagena Film Festival, 2000: Golden India Catalina - Best Actress (Dolores Heredia); Best Production Design (Eugenio Caballero, Salvador Parra).