YIB

In an autonomous zone between Mexico and Guatemala, where the border did not exist before and today seems impassable, two eleven-year-old girls with Mayan roots try to change their lives with music. The two unequal cousins Alejandra and Aleyda have very different ideas of future and origin.
Does music have the power to change a life? And what does the search for one's own identity mean when one has been separated from one's origin?

La Trinitaria in Chiapas, a state in the south of Mexico on the border with Guatemala, is an autonomous zone governed by civilian indigenous authorities. The formerly unified Mayan Zone is now separated from Guatemala and Mexican territory by an impassable border.
The national music program "Movimiento Nacional de Agrupaciones Musicales Comunitarias" has a choir in Tziscao (Mexico) and Guaxacaná (Guatemala). The dangerous border area with its impenetrable jungle and the lagoons make it difficult for young people to access the other part of the country. Penpals are often the only contact. The area of La Trinitaria seems cut off from the the modern world. But even from their own indigenous roots, the young people in Tziscao have gone a long way.
The two eleven-year-old cousins Alejandra and Aleyda sing in the choir of Tziscao and are inseparable. Every day they play football or basketball in the school's foggy sports field, sing Chuj and international folklore songs in the village hall, learn Spanish and math in the classroom, or do their homework in the afternoon sun by the lake. In addition, they help their parents in the field, in the supervision of their little siblings or in the kitchen of the family restaurant. But although they are inseparable, they are also a completely different team. While Aleyda comes from an open and affluent family and is blessed with a balanced and friendly character, the angry and rabid Alejandra comes from a poor and austere household. However, their difference is most evident in the perception of their own indigenous roots.
While Aleyda choruses the songs of the Chuj wrong but energetic, for Alejandra the culture of the Chuj and the marginalized place Guaxacaná, where Chuj is not only past but also present, represents epitome of dirt and illness. For Aleyda, dealing with her roots does not seem to contradict with her desire to one day leave this place to become a doctor. For Alejandra, however, her parents have already decided to take over her mother's food truck in Tziscao. Already it is becoming lear how the two inseparable girls will one day go their separate way. Both will make different decisions about the influence of their roots on their future. At the end they will sing together with the choir in Guaxacaná. In her arduous and dangerous journey across the border to Guaxacaná finally lies the solution to her question of origin, future and her own identity.
A very intimate and subtle portrait of two young people growing up in a place whose roots threaten to tear appart in the existential conflict between tradition and modernity. An area through which the border stretches like a deep scar not only through the mythical primeval forest, but also through the social structure of a formerly united commmunity. A film about the search for an experience of one's own origin and the restoration of long-forgotten bridges. Told as a tribute to the power of music.