Costa Rica has selected Kim Torres’s acclaimed debut feature If We Don’t Burn, How Do We Light Up the Night / Si no ardemos, cómo iluminar la noche as its official submission for Best International Feature Film at the 99th Academy Awards.
A co-production between Costa Rica, Mexico, and France, the film had its world premiere last year in the New Directors competition of the San Sebastián International Film Festival. It has since continued a successful international festival run, winning Best Feature Film in the Ibero-American Competition at the Cartagena International Film Festival and, most recently, Best Costa Rican Feature at the Costa Rica International Film Festival.
Set amid the forests and sprawling palm plantations of rural Costa Rica, If We Don’t Burn, How Do We Light Up the Night follows Laura, a 13-year-old girl struggling to adjust to a newly formed family. Just as she begins to settle into her new surroundings, she discovers that the community harbors a dark secret that threatens the women she loves. Moving between coming-of-age drama, fable, and social allegory, the film explores the loss of childhood innocence against the pervasive threat of gender-based violence.
Starring Lara Yuja Mora alongside Keylin Delgado Arguedas, Valentina Chaves Jimenez, and Teresa Sánchez, If We Don’t Burn, How Do We Light Up the Night marks Torres’s feature directorial debut following her acclaimed short Night Light / Luz nocturna, which competed for the Palme d’Or at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival—the first Costa Rican film to do so. Her work has also screened at the New York Film Festival, Locarno, MoMA, Film at Lincoln Center, and other international venues.
The Costa Rican selection was made by a committee composed of filmmakers Óscar Castillo Herrera, Patricia Velásquez Guzmán, Ariel Escalante Meza, and Juan Manuel Fernández Escoto, alongside producer Luis Alonso Álvarez Villegas. The country selected Valentina Maurel’s Siempre soy tu animal materno separately to represent Costa Rica in the Best Ibero-American Film category of Spain’s Goya Awards.
The 99th Academy Awards will take place on March 14, 2027. The shortlist for Best International Feature Film will be announced December 15, with Oscar nominations announced January 21, 2027.
