“Victoria Above the Clouds,” starring Berlin Best Actress winner Paulina García, and “Quemada,” from the producers of the 2026 Cannes Film Festival winner “Mother Forever,” will both be screened at Desde El Centro at the 2026 Costa Rica Media Market. The project is a showcase of projects that focus on important upcoming titles, fast-growing companies and the ambitions of one of the world’s youngest and growing film scenes.
CRMM will be held July 14-15 in San José, the capital of Costa Rica.
Desde El Centro’s most anticipated project, “Victoria in the Clouds,” reunites Chile’s Paulina García, who won the Berlin Silver Bear for Sebastian Lelio’s “Gloria,” and Panamanian director Ana Endara after her multi-award-winning “Beloved Tropic,” which premiered in Toronto/San Sebastian in 2024.
Quemada, directed by Ardelía Istar, is one of the latest films from Costa Rican director Torres Tigres, following Valentina Morel’s Double Locarno Golden Leopard winner I Have Electric Dreams and Cannes 2026 Un Certain Regard Best Actress Award Winner Eternal Mother Animal.
Of the five production companies behind the Desde El Centro project whose founding dates were revealed to Variety, only Sputnik Film has been established for more than 10 years. If realized, two of the projects by Istaru and Luis Diego Pérez will be debuts, and two more (by Paz Leon and Natalia Solorzano) will be second releases.
Up-and-coming filmmakers are on a mission. Paramo Films, founded last year by Luis Diego Pérez, “aims to contribute to the development of a young local film voice with global resonance” that is “rooted in the sensibilities and spirit of Costa Rican identity”. The same is true for CCMM’s Panama and Guatemalan producers.
But that identity needs to be expanded further, the filmmakers argue. “I think we’re less interested in representing the idea of Costa Rica than in questioning it, expanding it, and finding a new cinematic language to talk about who we are,” director Natalia Solorzano told Variety.
Central America, or at least parts of it currently led by Costa Rica, are fueled by region-wide co-production. Guatemala’s Argot Productions, for example, has one feature film in post-production with Spain, “Se’ K’o,” and three feature projects with Honduras and Panama, “Bi’tzma.” “See you in November.” and the “salt mountains” of Guatemala, Mexico, and Argentina.
In a region where many small countries come together, there is no other option than collaborative production.
Argot receives state funding for the development and production of the project. However, one of the challenges is the political instability of the country’s film funding sources. One case in point: Argot’s April’s Tales received a production grant from the Honduran Film Institute to support part of the project’s production, according to Argot producer Ever Rodas. “However, due to the current political situation in the country, these funds have not yet been disbursed.”
There’s no denying the momentum and yearning for stability of the exciting new generation of Costa Rican directors (many of whom are women) making selections at A-list festivals. In this sense, the 2026 Cannes Un Certain Regard Best Ensemble Actress award for Mother Animal Forever is a recognition of how far Costa Rican cinema has come, and should spur the ambition and confidence of Costa Rican cinema to go even further.
Take a closer look at Desde el Centro’s titles on the Costa Rican Media Market:
“April’s Story” (Guatemala)
Director: Darwin Andino
Lead Producer: Argot Producciones
Darwin, a Honduran experimental filmmaker, has been connected to April through the screen since she was six years old. April’s Story, an author documentary film shot by April during a vacation trip to Honduras in July 2026, is a film father and daughter created together to sustain a connection despite the challenges of migration and language. It was shot primarily on iPhone 11 devices in Germany and Honduras, with some sequences shot with cinema cameras and theatrical mise-en-scenes that evoke the memory and emotional journeys of the protagonists, producer Ever Rodas told Variety.
“No culpen a la bestia” (Costa Rica, Panama)
Director: Luis Diego Perez
Lead Producer: Paramo Films
A queer coming-of-age drama: When his best friend, with whom he had a special bond, suddenly moves away, nine-year-old introvert Ivan, who is preparing for his first communion, is forced to face the pain of loss in silence. “This film is important and relevant in today’s context because it acknowledges the existence of queer childhoods in Latin America and the need to continue searching for a safe space in secret due to a cruel and hostile environment,” Perez says.
“La Pelota” (Costa Rica)
Director: Paz Leon
Producer: Noche Negra Productions
From director Alejandra Vargas Carballo’s Noche Negra, Kim Torres’ debut San Sebastian directorial film How to Light the Night If It Doesn’t Burn, and Felipe Zuniga’s La Picada, which won the Sanfic Best Director award. When Marta, 32, discovers she has breast cancer, fear and anxiety set in. She begins to address this mass as if it were an intimate companion, leading her to an unexpected connection with her own body. “‘La Pelota’ explores a side of breast cancer that is rarely depicted, not as a story of loss, but as a profound encounter with bodies, desire, and the fragility of life,” Leon told Variety.
“Quemada”
Quemada Provided by: Ardelia Istar
“Quemada” (Costa Rica, Panama, France)
Director: Ardelia Istar
Lead Producer: Tres Tigres
Here, in a hybrid documentation feature, scribe Istarú (“Pruebas”) fuses documentation, fiction, performance, and abstract artistic expression. Ardelia and her mother Ana, an erotic poet, come to terms with the distribution of intimate photographs of Ardelia without her consent when she was 15 years old. It also means confronting the bullies at Ardelia’s school who distributed the photo, Istarou tells Variety, exploring the complex “power dynamics between victim and bully and the disturbing ways in which reconciliation feels like the most comforting outcome.”
“The Spell to Bring a Witch Back to Life” (“Alguien se acuerda”, Costa Rica, Uruguay, Spain)
Director: Natalia Solorzano Vazquez.
Producer: Sputnik Movie
Sputnik Films is set on the back of Sofia Quiroz’s 2019 Cannes Critics’ Week selection Land of Ashes and its sequel Madre Pájaro, a hybrid documentary feature that turned on a casting call to embody Solara de Persia, a mythical 1960s fortune teller from Costa Rica. “This film is an act of collective mourning. It starts with a woman who has been erased[from public memory and the stories told about her country]and asks what it takes to bring someone back,” says Solorsano Vázquez.
“Victoria in the Clouds” (“Victoria en las Nubes”, Panama, Chile, France)
Director: Ana Endara
Lead Producer: Expansiva Cine
Set in Panama’s lush coffee-growing landscape, 65-year-old plantation owner Victoria (Paulina Garcia) is forced to question her privileged life. “Through Victoria’s journey, the film explores the contradictions of privilege, the transformation of a rural community, and the challenge of recognizing one’s place within that transformation,” Endara told Variety. The film was produced by Isabela Gálvez’s Expansiva Cine, an emerging co-production company in Central America that includes Mansa Productura (Panama), Mimbre Films (Chile), and Respiro Productions (France).
“Jubalta” (Dominican Republic)
Director: Naive Tavares Avel
Producer: Cinema Costanera
Tavares Abel’s family has no photos of her great-grandfather’s life in Palestine before he immigrated to the Caribbean. Teaming up with Leuvenson, a Haitian artist living in the Dominican Republic, the director attempts to recreate lost memories through stop-motion animation as Leuvenson talks about his own migration experiences. “Jubalta brings together two seemingly distant realities: the Palestinian experience of displacement and the persecution of Haitian immigrants in the Dominican Republic,” says Tavares Abel. Produced by Santo Domingo and Detroit-based Cinema Costanera, which featured “Colosal” at the Berlin Forum.
Invited project filmed in Costa Rica
“Xibalba” (UK)
Director: Jack Salvadori
Producer: Portal Pictures
Xibalba, the London-based Italian writer-director-producer’s feature debut, is a psychological thriller set in a decaying villa in the rainforest, where the life of an elderly Nazi exile unravels as jungle and paranoia take over his last refuge. “The protagonist’s isolation has created a fragile sense of stability built on routine and delusion. As that stability begins to crumble, the rainforest that surrounds him becomes an extension of his deteriorating mental state, exposing the fears and contradictions he has suppressed all his life,” Salvadori told Variety.
