AllMovie

Writer and director Joseph Israel Laban delivers a harrowing look at the human cost of the international drug trade in this drama. In the slums of Manila, poverty is rampant and opportunities are few, which make it easy to recruit people to take part in sex work or drug smuggling, and Isabel (Maria Isabel Lopez) has been involved in both. She's spent years as a streetwalker, and then made her living as a drug mule, traveling into China with condoms full of narcotics stuffed into her bodily orifices. Tired of making small money working for others, Isabel recruits desperate young people to help move contraband across the border for a major dealer, but is eager to launch her own smuggling business as well. Along the way, Cuchera explores the mechanics of smuggling using drugs mules, the seedy underworld of Manila's underground economy, the violent crime and opportunism that follows the trade in sex and drugs, and the grim fates of drug mules who are caught by authorities in transit. Cuchera received its North American premiere at the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival.