Madeinusa is a 2005 film set in the fictional indigenous village of Manayaycuna (“the town no-one can enter” in Quechua) in the Peruvian Andes. The story covers three days in the lives of the villagers and a stranger from Lima. The stranger, Salvador (Carlos de la Torre), is unwelcome because he has arrived at the beginning of the “Holy Time,” a syncretic religious festival spanning Good Friday and Easter Sunday.
The villagers of Manayaycuna believe that during “Holy Time” God, symbolized by an effigy of Christ, is dead and, therefore, nothing is a sin. The drama centers around the encounter of the eponymous Madeinusa (Magaly Solier), a teenaged girl selected as the festival’s Immaculate Virgin and daughter of the village mayor, with Salvador.