Fausta has grown up on stories of the horrors that occurred during the internal conflict in Peru between Sendero Luminoso, a guerrilla group, and the Peruvian government.

Fausta takes work in the home of a wealthy pianist, Aída (Susi Sánchez), who is struggling to complete a new piece in time for an upcoming recital.

Between 1980 and 1992 Peru experienced a period of extreme violence, particularly in the Andean region, because of the uprising of the Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) and the actions of the paramilitary and state armed forces.

Claudia Llosa refers in her film to the folk belief that the trauma experienced by women who were raped by members of security force was passed on to their children through their breast milk.

Llosa's work is a psychological as well as sociological approach to the 12 years of conflict, and exposes the mass rapes used by the army as a strategy of war.

[1][2] In her book, Theidon documents a number of testimonials by women who were raped by as many as thirty men at a time, atrocities that often resulted in pregnancies.

Boyd van Hoeij from Variety said that "Peruvian realities and Llosa's light magical realism mesh to create a vivid picture of a society and its problems."