Muñecos del destino (Destiny Puppets) revisits the melodrama genre’s common places: love, desire, rivalry and death through characters portrayed by rag dolls with no visible features on their faces that live in a city in northwestern Argentina, displayed in miniature sets.
It is a miniseries divided in eight chapters of 26 minutes each, that won a federal contest organized by the National Institute of Cinema and Audiovisual Arts (INCAA) and the Ministry of Planning / Argentina’s digital public Television (TDA). It had its premiere at the public television channel in March 2012 in prime time hour averaging 2.6 points of rating.

The story, played by cloth puppets, dwells in quotations and references on classical and modern melodrama and soap opera. The show is set on Maipu Street in San Miguel de Tucumán, core of the Syrian-Lebanese community in northwestern Argentina. Naim Masmud is a young man who dreams of paragliding all day long, but has to run the family fabric business after his father, Said Masmud, is killed by Lydia, his former employee. Naim is engaged to Layla Ale Ali, a girl who faked an accident in order to keep her fiancé by her side and that is secretly dating her gardener Victor. Naim’s life changes when he meets Jessica, a rebellious girl who starts working at the store for whom Naim soon falls in love. The plot of the story follows the hardships that Naim most overcome: he has to decide whether to devote himself to the family business or follow his true love and desires.