Costa Rica Lifts Off With Growing Talent Pool, Film Support, Scenic Locations

variety.com:

Ed Meza @edmezavarWith its focus on Costa Rica, the Málaga Festival Industry Zone (MAFIZ) is showcasing the central American country’s bourgeoning film sector and talent with presentations of feature films, works in progress, projects in development and the country’s scenic locations and support opportunties.Costa Rican filmmakers and their projects are participating in MAFIZ’s various sections, including the Malaga Festival Fund & Co-Production Event (MAFF); Málaga Work in Progress; Málaga Talent and Hack Málaga.Nicole Chi’s documentary “Guián” and Daniel Ross Mix’s “El Zoológico de la Milla 70” (“70 Mile Zoo”) are the two Costa Rican projects taking part in the Work in Progress section.

In “Guián,” Chi chronicles her own personal journey of discovery as she travels to China following the death of her grandmother Guián.

She sets out to find the house her grandmother abandoned when she emigrated to Costa Rica years ago in the hope of finding answers to the questions she was never able to ask because she never learned Chinese and her grandmother never learned Spanish.“This is the first time that we have come to a festival in person to present ‘Guián,’ Chi told Variety. “It has been a wonderful opportunity to present the film to an audience and talk about it with people outside of virtual space.

The connection and curiosity that the film has aroused has allowed us to see more clearly the universality of a project that began as something very intimate.”In “70 Mile Zoo,” which Ross Mix is directing, producing and starring in, a grieving widower from Costa Rica travels to Canada to meet up with an old friend.