Festival Finds: The Costa Rican Films Headed to the Windy City

Fall festival season is still in full swing. The Chicago International Film Festival opens today, and Alejandro Riera shares his picks from this year’s lineup. He spotlights two Costa Rican features, highlighting a national cinema that often doesn't get the attention it deserves on the international circuit. Plus, Guillermo del Toro’s “The Devil’s Backbone” returns to the big screen, and the documentary on a 1970s Chicano art collective, "ASCO: Without Permission," is Alejandro's streaming recommendation.

Happy Watching,

— Vanessa

An official selection at the Chicago International Film Festival in 2001, “The Devil’s Backbone” is Guillermo del Toro’s third feature and centers on a school that shelters the orphans of the Republican militias at the tail end of the Spanish Civil War. A gigantic air-dropped bomb sprouts out of the grounds of the school run by two benevolent teachers (Federico Luppi and Marisa Paredes) sympathetic to the Republican cause. One night, twelve-year-old Carlos, a recent arrival, discovers that a former student's ghost haunts the school. Twenty-five years later, “The Devil’s Backbone” has lost none of its haunting power.

Screening at Chicago’s Music Box Theatre on October 27.

Shown last year at Chicago’s National Museum of Mexican Art as part of the Chicago International Film Festival’s year-round series of free community screenings, and executive produced by Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna, Travis Gutiérrez Senger’s documentary follows the 1970s and 80s revolutionary East L.A. Chicano avant-garde collective that used guerrilla and performance art to both challenge stereotypes and create work that represented their culture. “ASCO: Without Permission" also looks at a younger generation of Chicano artists following in ASCO's footsteps.

Streaming on the PBS website and app.

Make it a double feature: It’s a perfect companion piece to “American Pachuco: The Legend of Luis Valdez,” streaming on the PBS website and YouTube.

— By Alejandro Riera

Outside of Jayro Bustamante’s titanic efforts to place Guatemala in world cinema’s mapa mundi, Central American productions rarely, if ever, feature in conversations about Latin American cinema. Their selection at A-list festivals is equally rare; you will almost always find these movies, both shorts and features, only at Latino film festivals.

While the region’s violent political history and precarious economic conditions curtailed film industry development throughout most of the 20th Century, countries like Costa Rica and Panamá are now laying the foundations for their own film communities and industries. Festivals like Festival de Cine Ícaro and IFF Panamá, and market fairs like the Costa Rica Media Market, have spotlighted the region’s emerging talent and projects. For example, last year the Costa Rica Media Market hosted over 900 business meetings, showcased more than 150 audiovisual projects, and brought together 50 international buyers from 19 countries, according to Variety. Some of Latin America’s most idiosyncratic, personal, and unique movies today come from Costa Rica. More importantly, most of the filmmakers behind this resurgence are women, among them Antonella Sudasassi (“The Awakening of the Ants”); Nathalie Álvarez Mésen (“Clara Sola”); Paz Fábrega (“Cold Water of the Sea”); and Sofía Quirós Ubeda (“Land of Ashes”).

For its 62nd edition, the Chicago International Film Festival has programmed two Costa Rican features for the first time in 15 years (I was part of the festival’s publicity team for nine of those years): Valentina Maurel’s “Forever Your Maternal Animal” (“Siempre soy tu animal materno”) and Neto Villalobos Brenes’ “Love Is the Monster” (“Amor es el monstruo”). This year’s program of 113 features and 57 shorts includes more than a dozen productions from Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, Mexico and Perú, two of them previewed by Cinelandia’s Tiffany Vazquez at other festivals: Nicolás Pereda’s “Everything Else Is Noise” and Fernanda Tovar’s “Sad Girlz.”