Fruit of the drunken tree

Seven-year-old Chula and her older sister Cassandra enjoy a carefree life thanks to their family's protective bubble in a country where even going out on the street is sometimes dangerous. Behind the walls of a gated affluent neighbourhood in Bogotá, the threat of bombings, kidnappings, and assassinations is ever-present. When their mother hires Petrona, a teenage girl from a poor neighbourhood, as a maid, Chula tries to understand her strange behaviour. However, behind Petrona's mysteriousness lies not only a desperate effort to provide for her struggling family but also her first love, which is pulling her in a different direction. Petrona and Chula gradually become entangled in a web of secrets that forces them both to choose between sacrifice and betrayal.

The Fruit of the Drunken Tree, told alternately from the perspectives of the headstrong Chula and the shy maid Petrona, depicts two very different but inextricably linked coming-of-age stories in a country torn by civil war, and reveals the impossible choices that women are often forced to make.