Recommended Books, Films & Music

Costa Rica has a budding and promising young film industry. Local feature films like Tropix, Caribe, and Passport are all out on subtitled DVD. In 2008, El Camino (The Path) by Costa Rican filmmaker Ishtar Yasin Gutiérrez was screened at the Berlin Film Festival. And several other feature films are expected to be produced in 2009 and 2010, including Del Amor y Otros Demonios, based on a novel by Gabriel García Márquez.

If you want to see Costa Rica used simply as a backdrop, the major motion picture productions of 1492 by Ridley Scott and starring Gerard Depardieu and Sigourney Weaver; Congo, featuring Laura Linney and Ernie Hudson, and The Blue Butterfly with William Hurt, all feature sets and scenery from around the country.

There's a small Costa Rican Film and Video festival (www.centrodecine.go.cr) each November in San José.