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The Costa Rica Film Festival kicks off next week with a program featuring major festival hits such as Carla Simón’s “Romería,” Bi Gan’s “Resurrection,” Diego Céspedes’s “The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo,” Ulrike Ottinger’s Isabelle Huppert-starring “The Blood Countess” and Lucrecia Martel’s “Landmarks.” The 14th edition, taking place in San Jose between July 23 and August 1, will open with Allan Deberton’s Berlin-winning “Gugu’s World.”
Titles selected for the festival’s primary competitive strand, the Central American and Caribbean Feature Film Competition, include Costa Rican talent such as Hernán Jiménez with “Abril,” Kim Torres’s with “Si no ardemos cómo iluminar la noche” and Wainer Méndez Solano with “Dama de las mil máscaras.” The competition also features films from Cuba, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Panamá and Puerto Rico, including Vanessa Batista’s “Calle Cuba” and “Niñas Escarlata,” by Paula Cury.
This year’s festival theme is “Cinema That Unites Us,” reaffirming the event’s commitment to tending to local communities. Amongst the novelties in the program is a dedicated Afro-Caribbean section, an initiative the festival has described as “a necessary space for visibility, inclusion, and intercultural dialogue with Afro-descendant communities, whose stories and perspectives profoundly enrich our cinematic landscape.”
The CRFF continues its mission to champion female filmmakers, a fitting tribute given that the Central American country has risen to international prominence with a strong generation of female filmmakers that include Valentina Maurel, Sofia Quirós, Antonella Sudasassi and Hilda Hidalgo. On July 26, the festival will host the Meeting of Female Filmmakers from Central America and the Caribbean, a space that aims to create “joint strategies against sexism, contributing to reducing the gender gaps historically present in cinema and promoting networks of collaboration and mutual support.”
Championing women is a mission close to the heart of festival director Patricia Velásquez Guzmán, a filmmaker herself. Last year marked her first edition at the helm of the event and also the first time the festival elected a female head. Speaking with Variety ahead of the Costa Rica Media Market, where she is enthusiastically greeted by several local young filmmakers, Guzmán says her first year at the top only emphasized her desire to make the festival an inclusive community-led event with its eyes firmly held on Central America.
“My priorities remain the same,” she says. “I strive for the regionalization of the festival, increasingly as a platform for exchange among Central American and Caribbean filmmakers. Politically speaking, it’s always getting harder to make films. In the region, we are constantly facing governments that don’t prioritize culture, art and film. We want to strengthen our networks from the industry side so that more films can be completed. When funding is difficult, we need networks. And it’s also about giving our films visibility and a space. I think this will always be the main point of the festival.”
Asked about why Valentina Maurel’s Cannes-winning “Forever Your Maternal Animal” is not headed to the festival, Guzmán says it is a “shame,” but the film was not submitted during the call to entries window. “She was waiting for Cannes, and I understand filmmakers prefer their international premieres before coming home to Costa Rica.”
Guzmán adds, however, that Maurel’s film is a testament to the “great moment” of Costa Rican cinema. “Women filmmakers in the country are really standing out. They have excelled for the last three years, and this generation is so strong. We are also eagerly awaiting Sofia Quirós’ ‘Madre Pájaro’ this year, as well as a new film by Paz Fábrega. It’s also a moment when there is increasingly less budget for culture, so we need to make these films visible as they are also putting their finger on the wound of important issues.”
“These are films talking about issues that affect us all,” she adds. “Valentina is talking about violence, about families, issues that have historically been avoided in places like Costa Rica. We are seeing films talking about sexual abuse, about religion, and I think there’s something very valuable about these conversations besides the aesthetic and artistic value of the work itself.”
This is true of the festival’s only Costa Rican world premiere, “Lost Men,” by Andrés Madrigal Alvarado. The sensitive, moving documentary follows the filmmaker as he grapples with a shattering family secret to build a poignant parallel between the director’s own queerness and his grandfather’s hidden identity.
Elsewhere in the program, Guzmán is particularly excited about the festival’s Generation Alpha strand, dedicated to films about and starring young people. This year, the strand includes two Brazilian films in Allan Deberton’s festival opener “Gugu’s World” and Priscilla Kellen’s animated “Papaya,” as well as other Berlin breakouts in Fernanda Tovar’s “Chicas Tristes” and Jaein Yoo’s “En Route.” On the other side of the spectrum, the Year 13 section presents audiences with daring genre offerings such as Guto Parente’s “Death and Life Madalena,” Bi Gan’s “Resurrection” and Ulrike Ottinger’s “The Blood Countess.”
The Borders section, encompassing films that inhabit social, geographical and cinematographical margins, will feature Mehrdad Oskouei’s IDFA breakout “A Fox Under a Pink Moon,” Cecilia Kang’s “Hijo Mayor,” Berlinale standout “Light Pillar” by Xu Zao and Lucrecia Martel’s Venice entry “Landmarks,” as well as Carla Simón’s Cannes competition title “Romería.”
On the retrospective side, the festival will feature Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey,” Ridley Scott’s “Blade Runner” and Steven Spielberg’s “E.T.” in a section called Parallel Universes. The Atomic Caribbean sidebar, a novelty in this year’s program, will showcase recent works by Afro-Caribbean filmmakers, including Gabriela A. Moses’s “Boca Chica,” Paloma Gomide’s “Si la vida me diera un deseo” and Eleonóre Coyette and Sephora Monteau’s “Tres Hojas.”
Below, you will find the complete competition section at this year’s Costa Rica Film Festival:
Central American and Caribbean Feature Film Competition
“A tu lado,” dir. Cristiano Regina, Cuba
“Abril,” dir. Hernán Jiménez,” Costa Rica
“Bajo el mismo sol,” dir. Ulises Porra, Dominican Republic
“Calle Cuba,” dir. Vanessa Batista, Cuba. 2026.
“Comparsa,” dir. Vickie Curtis and Doug Anderson, Guatemala
“Dama de las mil máscaras,” dir. Wainer Méndez Solano, Costa Rica
“El regresado,” dir. Armando Capó, Cuba
“Espina,” dir. Daniel Poler, Panamá
“Esta isla,” dir. Lorraine Jones and Cristian Carretero, Puerto Rico
“Niñas Escarlata,” dir. Paula Cury, Dominican Republic
“Para Vivir, El implacable tiempo de Pablo Milanés,” dir. Fabien Pisani, Cuba
“Si no ardemos cómo iluminar la noche,” dir. Kim Torres, Costa Rica
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