Best Costa Rican movies

In a remote village in Costa Rica, Clara, a withdrawn 40-year-old woman, experiences a sexual and mystical awakening as she begins a journey to free herself from the repressive religious and social conventions which have dominated her life.

Eva a 16-year-old girl lives with her mother, her younger sister and their cat, but wants to move in with her estranged father. Clinging onto him, she tries to balance between the tenderness and sensitivity of teenage life.

Isa has more than enough on her plate with two children and the household, which she manages on her own. When her husband persists with his wish for a third child, she realizes that something must change.

Three girls are for their mother, very close and familiar and a source of constant mystery all at the same time. While trying to understand them she is pushed to explore herself deeper as a mother and as a daughter.

First short film by Sergio Saravia

Tatiana is a journalist with a routine life in all its aspects and a recently failed love relationship. Motivated by her best friend, she decides to make a stop and travel around Costa Rica to find herself and inner peace.

It's been 7 years after their farewell. Each of the characters: Manuel, Bernie, Néstor and El Gordo have continued on with their lives. Older and more mature, but always afraid to face the future, these 4 friends reconnect and decide to spend a weekend together, to remember and honor their friendship, just like old times.

After his alcoholic father's death, a young man decides to sell the last memory of him — his taxi.

In a desolate supermarket, a religious woman's peaceful evening is interrupted by the sudden arrival of three punks, who are running away from the police and hiding something much more valuable than money.

A young girl is contacted by a photographer through social networks, who offers her the possibility of some free photographs that she needs to boost her modeling career, however, she finds herself in an apparent situation of danger but despite this and in view of the possibility of helping one of her best friends who is missing, she decides to confront the possible attacker but discovers a tremendous secret that could really end her life.

A loving, painstaking study

The night is dark and cold, I walk through the plantations, I look at the leaves and stems of the banana trees while memories of my grandfather come to my mind.

After meeting at a party, Luciana and Pedro... embark on a spur of the moment journey together that takes them to the forest. Asthey explore the beauty in the nature that surrounds them, they camp out under the stars, go on hikes, indulge in the passions of their encounter, and discuss their personal beliefs surrounding love, obligations, and attraction. Lensed in lush black-and-white cinematography amidst the gorgeous backdrop of the Costa Rican forest, an honest and genuine relationship story unfolds, lending a feeling of realism to their storybook romance in a refreshing and youthful way.

A smart poor girl and a inmature rich boy get their life twisted when they accidently have a baby.

Seven stories portray Costa Rican culture through the eyes of 15 children who discover the world playing and exploring in their worlds full of innocence.

The story of a young man who finds himself involved in a crisis after an event plunges him into the depths of his subconscious

A drama that center's around 5 soccer players from Costa Rica, that qualifies for the first time to a World Cup. With no support, they must face the most important challenge ever, prepare themselves to play the first official World Cup match.

Thoughtfully, lovingly, Aurora tells the story of an unwanted pregnancy. Alongside her work as an architect, 40-year-old Luisa gives inspirational creative workshops to children. One day, she comes across 17-year-old Julia by the school toilets; it turns out she has unintentionally become pregnant. Luisa decides to help her – in the process manoeuvring herself into a difficult position somewhere between friend, teacher and mother figure. Or does she secretly enjoy playing this role?

Saving the world's last dinosaur, the sea turtle.

Irene is a single mother who works in a photocopying business. She lives with Santiago, her seven year old son, and her controlling mother Dinia. Then she meets Diego. They go out, she gets drunk, and the failed date triggers in Irene a crisis concerning her sexuality, her motherhood, and the relationship with her mother.

Raised in a repressive era where sexuality was taboo, Ana, Patricia, and Mayela found their understanding of womanhood based on unspoken rules and implicit impositions. Now, their fearless voices incarnate in a single 65-year-old woman, who revisits a kaleidoscopic life of intertwined memories, secrets, and hidden desires.

Elena is a 17 year old teenager who has doubts about her sexuality. She lives with her grandmother who is a repressive and hard-to-please religious woman and in the midst of it all, her cousin Julia appears at her house, bringing new airs to her life and awakening Elena's need to discover herself.

Accompanied by a weather reporter, two helpless news anchors take on the halls of School. They scavenge the hallways for love, friendship, and answers to new questions.

Tokyo work culture's most compelling and complex protagonist; the Salaryman. A nameless, voiceless, over-worked and under-valued cog in the labour pool, expected to compromise home and social lives. Late nights and intense drinking sessions leave many of them passed out in the city streets. This slick, incisive documentary raises questions around the ethics of our global working practices in a capitalist society.

For her entire professional life, renowned ecologist Nalini Nadkarni pioneered climbing techniques to study "what grows back” after an ecological disturbance in the rainforest canopy. Now, after surviving a life-threatening fall from a tree, she must turn her research question onto herself in order to understand the effects of disturbance and recovery throughout her life.

Gabo and Maga are an old couple who have lived together all their life and depend emotionally on each other completely. Delia, their grand-daughter, was brought up by them. The three of them live together harmoniously in a cosy atmosphere. At the age of 27, she already has a promising career in a big company. Everything is turned upside down with Maga’s sudden death just at the moment when Delia is assigned a very responsible task, the management of a major project which may launch her carer or bring it to an inglorious end. And what’s more to it, in the opening of the testament it turns out that Maga had expressed the wish that her ashes be dispersed in the Caribbean. Delia is facing a serious dilemma, as in her grand-father’s life there is nothing else now but the accomplishment of his companion’s last wish at a time when Delia can not abandon her professional commitment for a trip to the Caribbean.

After a decade abroad, Antonio returns to Costa Rica for a short visit. Unable to run away as usual, he is confronted with everything he has desperately struggled to put in the past: a broken family, an ailing father, a violent country and long lost friends.

A young man receives an unexpected visitor.

'Buscando a Marcos Ramírez' is about a Costarican from the countryside that loses his mother and starts living with his grandfather. He starts going to a new high school which means new challenges. As he tries to achieve his life goal of becoming a professional soccer player. In the meantime, he looks for himself, for what he really is, and want to do with his life.

Bella strolls on the beach of her youth, reflecting on life.

A black comedy about Chalo, a lone security guard who acquires his first gamecock and discovers the bittersweet taste of friendship.

A woman becomes embroiled in a life-or-death struggle after kidnappers spirit her away to a remote area of Costa Rica.

A group of friends decide to make a documentary about the ghosts that are supposed to be haunting The Sanatorium in Costa Rica, things get creepy when the arrive to the place.

Hernandez had already made films in Guatemala and Mexico and this time found inspiring locations, unusual atmosphere and enthusiastic young people in Costa Rica. In this consciously unpolished film, the rebellious girls Sole and Ana open the trunk of a car in grandma’s garden and find something they’d rather immediately forget.

The Nicaraguan border in the eighties. Eleven-year-old Claudia and her younger sister experience the street fighting at first hand outside their car window. Their parents are Sandinista activists and, although the family is now escaping to neighbouring Costa Rica, the struggle continues. Their parents fire off terse commands and the girls are packed off to their relatives. The film focuses on the point of view of the two sisters, who are very close, as they learn more than they are able to cope with, but too little really to understand. A revolutionary struggle, seen through the eyes of children.

Norma's mother just died, leaving her alone and stranded in their small and isolated house in the mountains. Not knowing what do with her corpse, she ignores the situation childishly. When a neighbor finds out, she escapes and embarks on a journey following the tracks of her unknown father. But does he really exist? Or is the journey all part of a psychotic delusion?

Alsino, a boy of 10 or 12, lives with his grandmother in a remote area of Nicaragua. He's engulfed in the war between rebels and government troops when a US advisor orders the army to open a staging area by the boy's hamlet. Alsino tries to be a child, climbing trees with a girl, looking through his grandfather's trunk of mementos and trying to fly; he goes to town to sell a saddle, has his first drink and is taken to a brothel. But the war surrounds him. The US advisor takes Alsino on a chopper flight, but he's unimpressed. The soldiers' cruelties awake rebel sympathies in Alsino, and after an army assault backfires, the lad is fully baptized into the conflict.

Vicente and Abigail run a banana plantation in Limon Province, on the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica. Abigail's half-sister Irene, about whom Abigail knew nothing, comes to introduce herself. Banana prices start falling, threatening the plantation's finances. An oil company works with the government to get off-shore drilling rights, over local objection. Vicente is at the center of each cross-current. Will he fall for Irene? Can he save the plantation? Will he sell out to corporate offers?

Maikol Yordan (Mario Chacón) realizes his family farm is about to be sold by the bank to the evil G.F. Malavassi (Adal Ramones). So, in order to raise money to pay the debt, Maikol Yordan takes part in contests and promotions, and wins a travel to Europe, where his big adventure begins

Recently divorced, 72-year-old Violeta lives alone in her childhood house, tending to her lush tropical garden and making plans to turn her property into a boarding house. When she discovers the bank is about to take away her house, she breaks all the rules to hold onto her home and her freedom.

It is the year 2025, and Alejandro tells his grandson Josue a story from a book that he is reading about a singer and a dancer who fell in love in 1985, but love represents much more than only sharing life together.

A 2017 animated film directed by Julian Gallese. The film screened at Ann Arbor Film Festival in 2018.

There is a sound echoing across the forest of Talamanca. It triggers the extraordinary in the ordinary universe of Justo, a BriBri farmer, father and adventurer. It is the blow of the here and now, the quintessence of what is alive that expands a story made by imaginative materialities enshrined amidst Earth's liveliness and indigenous worldly epic. A film on the BriBri present in Talamanca, on its restless awakening and its companion wonders.

El Fin is comedy about the end of the world. Depressed by the recent death of his parents and losing his job, Nico; an ordinary 26 year old, decides to take refuge in his house for six months. Until that feared day when the media announces the end of the world is soon coming, caused by a gigantic meteorite.

Cuba, summer of 1994. In the midst of período especial, one of the greatest crises in the country’s history, thousands of Cuban rafters try to reach the United States illegally, never sure if they’ll make it out alive. With holidays starting, Carlos plunges into a carefree August, wandering around with his friends and falling in love for the first time. Little does he know about the country’s uncertain future, and in this hot summer, the world of Carlos will turn upside down.

On New Year's holidays, Mariana (21) and Rodrigo (30) drive to the coast where he has to sell a property. There, they find Karina (7), late at night and in the middle of nowhere. She tells then she ran away from home.

This beautifully integrated, multi-threaded narrative seamlessly interweaves six stories set in radically different locations across Central America, ranging from the tropical forests of Guatemala to the skyscrapers of Panama City. When a solar storm leaves the region without power, myriad dramas unfold over the course of five days during which all conveniences of modernity are stripped away. In Costa Rica, a pastor and his daughter worry for the future of their church, while in El Salvador, a grandmother and grandson make an arduous journey into the city. A husband and wife reconnect in Honduras, as a young couple nurses a mysterious stranger back to health in Guatemala. Meanwhile, in Nicaragua, a young woman prepares for her quinceañera and in Panama, a housekeeper grows exasperated with her demanding employer.

Based on true events, is the first christian movie filmed in Costa Rica. Katherine, a young girl was abused in childhood, her life was perturbate since that particular event, even today she remember that moment and afford a new reality. In the other side, Alfonso and Rosario have a dificult marriage. They meet for first time their son's girlfriend, but inmediately Alfonso starts a secret relationship with that girl. On the worst moment, Jesus Christ come on and save their life showing them a new hope, love and forgiveness.

A young and dedicated nurse is trying to avoid the pain left by her dear cousin's suicide.

A short actualité depicting the aftermath of an infamous accident in Costa Rica when an overcrowded train carrying mostly farmers and labourers derailed while crossing the Virilla River Canyon, killing at least 250.

A couple makes coffee, when suddenly strange things start to happen.

Back in 2012 I had my very first Ayahuasca ceremony and, needless to say, I was terrified. But it ended up entirely changing my life and that of my future family. Which is why I decided to revisit the medicine in 2018, participating in three Ayahuasca ceremonies over the course of one week in Costa Rica, and document the process. In the film, we tackle my personal story of trying to build London Real into a global media and transformation company while also struggling with my own disconnection from friends, family and my own species. We also dive deep into the division and tribalism currently facing all of us around the world.

Insects mate, stories are born. The concept of “love” gets put under the looking glass in this captivatingly maverick film. Manuel, a lonely 36-year-old, begins an unusual friendship with the much younger Alma. A young foreign couple set out on an idyllic backpacking trip in Costa Rica. A Mexico City taxi driver visits a dive bar where he meets a sexy lounge singer. Vicente runs into an old classmate from high school and has something profound to share with her. Meanwhile, throughout the film, different couples speak about their relationships and thoughts

Domingo’s house in the Costa Rican mountains is about to be expropriated for the construction of a highway. But his land hides a secret: the ghost of his deceased wife visits him within the mist. Domingo is sure he will never give up his land, even if that means resorting to violence.

This movie is about the liberation by the Sandinistas of the Anastasio Somoza regime in NIcaragua. The movie covers some of te key points in the fight for León, a city close to the capital Managua, and the first liberated territory. Many of the inhabitants of León who participated in the guerrilla and members of the sandinista army participated in the film.

What are the social climate and cultural traditions in Costa Rica which nurture "machismo" and allow the domination of women to continue in Latin America?

Síncope explores the internal fantasy of a traffic officer in his everyday work

A woman is tormented by strange sounds when she comes home.

Born into the Chinese community in Costa Rica, filmmaker Nicole Chi Amén was never able to communicate with her grandmother Guián, who couldn’t speak Spanish. After her death, Nicole heads to China to rediscover her roots. The result is a sublime cinematic travelogue in which sensuous shots capture the essence of a place, in spite of linguistic differences.

Anahí, a girl about to turn eighteen, tries to spend her day as usual; going to school, seeing his classmates… But his friends soon realize that something is wrong. Back at home, there is an unpleasant memory waiting for her.

Hernán Jiménes explores his 12 years long career as a comedian in this hour and half routine in front of the Costa Rican audience in the National Auditorium