The 13th edition of the Costa Rica International Film Festival marks the first iteration with Patricia Velásquez Guzmán at the helm, but the filmmaker is a veteran when it comes to the San José-based event. Guzmán has participated at the festival since before it was a festival itself, producing the film showcase in the 2010s and returning several times both as part of the production team and as an invited filmmaker.
“I know the festival very well, so, as much as I love it dearly, I also know how it can be improved,” Guzmán tells Variety ahead of the festival’s kick-off. “One of the most important things right now is connecting with younger audiences without lowering the quality of the films we’re programming. We’re also heavily focused on the festival’s communication, catering the publicity to the themes we’re covering and how people can best experience the festival.”
Another key priority for Guzmán is making the festival more regional to Central America and the Caribbean. The festival’s two competitions — for best feature and short film — now include films from the entire region instead of just Costa Rica, as it did in years prior. “Only by forming alliances can we make the festival stronger. And not just at the festival level. It’s difficult for a filmmaker from Costa Rica alone to make much of an impact. We have voices telling similar stories from similar places. We have somewhat different cultural issues, but share shortcomings. We watch films from the Dominican Republic and Panama, and it resonates with what’s happening here.”
This continental resonance is present in the feature film competition, with films largely broaching issues of the rise in authoritarianism; the relationship between colonized countries in Central America and their colonizer, Spain; and the creative dialogue between generations as countries in the region experience large sociopolitical change. The high number of documentaries reflects this interest in the history of the countries in the region, with seven out of the eleven films in competition being non-fiction, including two Costa Rican world premieres in Álvaro Torres Crespo’s “Ella se detiene a mirar” and Juan Manuel Fernández Escoto’s “El monaguillo, el cura y el jardinero.”
“Ella se detiene a mirar” courtesy of Álvaro Torres Crespo
Other films in competition include Annecy standout “Olivia and the Clouds,” two Dominican Republic dramas in “La bachata de Biónico” and “Sugar Island,” and San Sebastián entry “Querido Trópico.” On top of a remarkable number of documentaries, another interesting thing about this year’s CRFIC is the emphasized focus on female filmmakers. The country boasts a fruitful new generation of directors, spearheaded by key women behind the camera, such as Antonella Sudasassi (“Memories of a Burning Body”), Valentina Maurel (“I Have Electric Dreams”), Nathalie Álvarez Mesén (“Clara Sola”), and the festival’s very own Guzmán, whose latest film, “The Skin of the Water,” premiered at Locarno last year.
On the festival’s first edition with a woman at its helm, CRFIC is proud to announce it has reached equality in terms of the number of films directed by women at the festival, as well as organizing a special strand called Women Under the Influence to showcase female-directed films from Spain.
“We have a lot of female directors and filmmakers across the production chain. We also have the Unión de Directoras de Cine, and have made great progress within institutions to have more equality,” says Guzmán. “We are seeing the results of years of work now and are terribly proud of it.”
Now, another long stretch of work begins for the festival as it aims to cultivate younger and generally more diverse audiences. “The festival has long catered mostly to cinephiles,” points out its director. “We want films that can be interesting to younger people and children, to the elderly, to people who are not necessarily cinephiles, and films that show realities Costa Rican audiences are not used to seeing.”
To answer to this demand, Guzmán and her team have programmed festival favourites such as Payal Kapadia’s “All We Imagine as Light,” Andrea Arnold’s “Bird,” Gabriel Mascaro’s “The Blue Trail,” and Berlin Teddy-award-winner “Lesbian Space Princess,” as well as presenting a strand titled Generation Alpha, reflecting on what it feels like to be young today. Elsewhere at the festival, the Year 13 strand celebrates the mythology around the number with a selection of genre offerings such as Sundance-hit “The Things You Kill” and Juan Francisco Olea’s modern western “Bitter Gold,” and the festival pays homage to musical cultures with a selection of films under The Beat Invasion banner, including “DJ Ahmet” and “The Flamenco Guitar of Yerai Cortés.”
This meaty programme is Guzmán and her team’s response to shrinking budgets at the festival, which might constrain its size but has not dampened its ambitions. “Even when our budget shrinks, we try to make sure audiences don’t notice,” says the head of the festival. “We collaborate with different institutions and work on strategies to make the festival feel larger and better for audiences as well as filmmakers. We want to create opportunities for filmmakers to connect and want to deliver the best programme we can. I think we were successful this year.”
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