In Colombia just after the Great War, an old man falls from a ladder; dying, he professes great love for his wife. After the funeral, a man calls on the widow - she dismisses him angrily. Flash back more than 50 years to the day Florentino Ariza, a telegraph boy, falls in love with Fermina Daza, the daughter of a mule trader.

The story revolves around Evaristo who¸ accompanied by his drum¸ dreams of becoming a great figure and imposing his music on the whole world. Evaristo composes cumbias and more cumbias on his ranch and then in jail¸ where adverse situations take him. Meanwhile his delusions begin to come true¸ and without knowing it¸ his name and rhythm become famous.

Based on a true story of a British television crew that travelled to Colombia to film a fake documentary about drug trafficking. In one scene, shot in the director’s hotel room, an actor played the part of a character whom the filmmakers passed off as Cali Cartel’s Number Three. They claimed they had risked their lives to get the interview. One sequence also shows a man pretending to swallow capsules of heroine and transporting them to London in his stomach. This phoney TV documentary is an international smash hit. When a London daily discovers that the whole thing is a hoax, a team of British journalists are sent out to Colombia to cover the story. Their report unleashes a scandal that shakes the very foundations of television in the UK.