Clara Sola by Nathalie Álvarez Mesén
By Alonso Aguilar
As Costa Rican films have become a surprisingly steady fixture in some of the world’s most important film festivals in the last couple years, attention to this small Central American nation’s cinematic output has increased exponentially. Even going back in time less than a decade ago, the mere idea of being able to talk about aesthetic trends and a diversity of artistic voices within the tico context seemed like a distant pipe dream. Despite many young and enthusiastic filmmakers taking their first steps around those years (particularly in the short film format), the uncertain reality that has plagued audiovisual development in the region held in check any long-term excitement.
After all, before this historic moment of effervescence, the timeline of Costa Rica’s filmography has been one of erratic peaks amidst long batches of absence. Beyond what amounts to essentially individualized attempts scattered throughout the better part of the 20th century, the only moment of a somewhat clear and articulated film scene happened during from the 1970s to mid 1980s, when the Costa Rican Film Production Center was at the height of its powers under the direction of pioneering filmmaker Kitico Moreno, known for her groundbreaking 1975 medium-length documentary A propósito de la mujer.
This was a brief stretch of time when a generation of local directors explored some of the country’s most pressing social concerns through short and medium-length documentary works still heavily indebted to the journalistic forms. As tends to be the case in Latin American history, eventually funding for the arts became less certain, and administrative and political changes basically buried this exciting page in Costa Rica’s audiovisual evolution.
It took a couple decades for cinema with artistic intent to make a comeback to Costa Rican screens, but as film historians Patricia Fumero and María Lourdes Cortés expose in their 2018 article “A Gaze Towards Contemporary Central American Cinema,” the late 90s and early 2000s saw a new generation of aspiring filmmakers who made the most out of the newfound accessibility of digital equipment, and the relative proximity of Cuba’s prestigious Escuela Internacional de Cine y Televisión in San Antonio de Los Baños. As has been the case ever since the Costa Rican Film Center’s glory days, the works that came out of this set of circumstances weren’t really a cohesive movement or even necessarily shared common perspectives or stylistic referents.
Cold Water of the Sea by Paz Fábrega
With 2004’s Caribe and 2009’s Gestation / Gestación, Esteban Ramirez’s works brought some of the first examples of a more professionalized approach to film, and the feature length debuts of directors Ishtar Yasin in 2008’s The Path / El camino and Hilda Hidalgo in 2009’s Of Love and Other Demons / Del amor y otros demonios expanded the kind of international showcases available to Costa Rican cinema, but as is still the case, the existence of all these works came out of adverse conditions, enthusiasm and individual efforts to secure important coproduction allies.
Building on these feeble foundations, the 2010s started with an important bump in international exposure thanks to the works of filmmaker Paz Fábrega, particularly 2010’s Cold Water of the Sea / Agua fría de mar, and even saw the eventual expansion towards renovated efforts of offering some kind of state assistance to filmmakers. With 2012 came the first edition of Costa Rica International Film Festival, a yearly event that has functioned as an essential platform for the Costa Rican medium to dialogue with their regional counterparts and worldwide experts in different industry fields.
Under the festival’s mantle, many of what would eventually become touchstone films in the country’s history were developed through its different stages of industry and work-in-progress workshops. In addition to this, “El Fauno’s (Fund for Audiovisual and Cinematographic Promotion) role in incentivizing local projects since being established by Costa Rica’s Film Center in 2015 can’t be understated, as it’s the main (and one of the few) public funding avenues available to Costa Rican filmmakers.
Despite the seminal role the aforementioned institutions have had in creating a less barren landscape for creative audiovisual works, the lack of actual legislation (an issue that has been discussed for decades now) and any kind of constant public policies or infrastructure around film, gives the recent uptick in world-class production a bittersweet taste, as it all feels oddly volatile.
Most of Costa Rica’s newest generation of standout directors, like Nathalie Alvarez (Clara Sola), Sofia Quirós (Land of Ashes / Ceniza negra), Valentina Maurel (Lucía in Limbo / Lucía en el limbo), Ariel Escalante (Domingo and the Mist / Domingo y la niebla) and Kim Torres (Night Light / Luz nocturna), have continued the tradition of local filmmakers studying abroad and then returning to the country for their projects, which has enriched the range of perspectives and the dialogues around the audiovisual craft, distribution and exhibition in the country.
Land of Ashes by Sofía Quirós
The success story of these filmmakers in most cases has to do with strategic co-productions, and a growing understanding of the wider international landscape. The sum of these factors has created a favorable aura of trust around Costa Rican cinema for international co-production, while also cementing the art coming from this Central American nation as something of interest to Cannes, Rotterdam, Locarno, and other top-tier events. Sadly, the same success hasn’t really translated locally, as many of these acclaimed, festival-certified films have a hard time securing screenings, and then holding their own against the mammoth, imported blockbusters that flock most cinemas tends to be a lost battle.
What has characterized the current and up-and-coming crop of Costa Rican audiovisual talent has been their reluctance to stick to the traditional ways of doing things. Through their specific formation, their visions and the experience they’ve gathered throughout the years, they’ve managed to show their works in some of the world’s biggest stages, but without much structural support, the question for Costa Rican cinema now lies in how to take the next step, in securing a constant stream of high-quality output instead of the spontaneous waves we’ve grown accustomed to.
Securing that more and more different backgrounds and voices can be part of this burgeoning film community, working to reach the audiences that traditional exhibition and distribution methods haven’t been able to, pushing for a more comprehensive local study and discussion around film, and of course, widening the legal and political infrastructure from which Costa Rican cinema can continue to grow are some of the priorities that come to the forefront as the country’s share in the global spotlight seems as bright as it’s ever been.
Alonso Aguilar is a cultural journalist from San José, Costa Rica. He does editorial labor in Krinégrafo: Cine y Crítica and his writings have featured in MUBI Notebook, Bandcamp Daily, Film International, photogénie, Cinema Year Zero, Costa Rica Festival Internacional de Cine, La Nación and Revista Correspondencias.
