Madeinusa (2006) Full Movie Summary & Plot Explained

Madeinusa

Year: 2006

Runtime: 100 mins

Language: Spanish

Director: Claudia Llosa

Drama

Madeinusa follows a young woman in an isolated Andean village in Peru, where intense religious devotion governs daily life. From 3 p.m. on Good Friday until Easter Sunday, the community lifts all moral and legal restraints, allowing residents to act without consequence. The film shows how this brief freedom affects Madeinusa and her world.

Set in the fictional small and isolated indigenous village of Manayaycuna (the town no one can enter, in Quechua) in the Peruvian Andes, the story unfolds over three days in the lives of the villagers and a stranger from Lima. The stranger, Salvador, Carlos J. de la Torre is sent by a mining company to evaluate the geology of the area, but must stay in Manayaycuna over the weekend until travel can be provided. Salvador appears unwelcome as he arrives at the beginning of Tiempo Santo, a syncretic religious festival spanning Good Friday and Easter Sunday, and is sequestered in a barn by the town’s mayor, Cayo, Juan Ubaldo Huaman. The villagers believe that during Tiempo Santo, God, symbolized by an effigy of Christ, is dead and, therefore, nothing is a sin.

Cayo is the father of the eponymous protagonist Madeinusa, Magaly Solier, a teenage girl who has long been trying to take her virginity. However, Madeinusa has been able to hold him off, promising she will relent during Holy Time.

At the weekend’s start, Madeinusa is chosen as the festival’s Mater Dolorosa, a designation that upsets her sister Chale, Yiliana Chong. Madeinusa, eager to leave the village and go to Lima, where her mother left years before, becomes interested in Salvador and shares a conversation with him in the family’s barn. During the town’s night march, Madeinusa loses her virginity to Salvador. When Cayo discovers what happened, he acts with intimidation toward Salvador, though he does not physically harm him.

Later, Salvador watches through a crack in the house’s wall as Cayo has sex with Madeinusa. Madeinusa pleads with Salvador to take her with him back to Lima, against the backdrop of the high sierra Andean landscape. At the end of the film, Madeinusa slips rat poison into her father’s soup, poisoning him. The two sisters place the blame on Salvador, and the film ends with Madeinusa sitting in what would have been Salvador’s seat on the truck back to Lima, suggesting he was killed or imprisoned by the villagers.

Last Updated: October 09, 2025 at 16:45

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