Tapping co-pro partners in Panama’s Expansive Cine and Peru’s Cine Infinito, the coming-of-age drama marks Felipe Zuñiga's solo directorial debut after working as an assistant director on films such as 'Clara Sola' and 'Forever Your Maternal Animal'
Four years after Ariel Escalante’s “Domingo and the Mist” premiered to acclaim at the Cannes Film Festival, Costa Rica’s flourishing Incendio Cine label continues to strike key co-production deals in the Central American country.
Panama’s Expansive Cine and Peru’s Cine Infinito have just joined Felipe Zúñiga’s solo directorial debut “We Won’t Let the Goat Die,” the winner of the grand prize at this year’s Fantastic Lab Central America & Caribbean, with seasoned producer Santiago Durán also boarding the film.
“We Won’t Let the Goat Die” trails ten-year-old Bernardo, who becomes consumed with watching over his mother following the sudden death of his father. As the widow struggles with depression, her son secretly rescues and cares for an injured goat deep within the tropical rainforest. When an ocelot begins prowling the neighborhood and a mysterious green light appears in the sky, Bernardo is forced to confront the harsh, uncontrollable nature of growing up.
“The film began with a feeling that stayed with me throughout my childhood: the feeling of being a child who had to take care of the adults,” the director tells Variety ahead of presenting the film at the upcoming Costa Rica Media Market. “I grew up in a home where I never fully knew what might happen. My mother went through very severe emotional crises, and my father struggled with alcohol. I was always alert to noises, changes in mood, and any sign that something might get out of control. For a long time, I believed it was my responsibility to keep my family together.”
The director emphasizes, however, that the film does not “reconstruct” his childhood, but that he and his protagonist “share a way of looking at the world.” “We both know the fear of losing a home and that impossible need to protect the people who are supposed to protect us. ‘We Won’t Let the Goat Die’ is not an autobiographical film, but it is built from the emotional material of my childhood: fear, tenderness, imagination and the idea that perhaps loving and caring for someone might be enough to keep them safe.”
“La Llorona” cinematographer Nicolás Wong, a previous Variety Talent to Track, produces the film alongside Zuñiga via Incendio Cine. The producer says the success he and the director found through their production label is a result of how they have “pinpointed what we want to do as producers.” In that sense, co-productions are an “important” element of their international projection.
“But equally as important for us is to develop auteur projects that make the most of our regional and budgetary limitations with passion and efficiency, and hopefully that will come through on the international scene,” he adds.
Zuñiga echoes that thought, saying that “co-production is still one of the best ways to get our projects off the ground.” “Our partners in Panama and Peru are trusted collaborators. Isabella Gálvez and Jimena Hospina are two producers whose work we greatly admire, and we have already worked together on previous projects, so we couldn’t be happier with the partnership we have built,” he adds, noting that Incendio is also currently in final talks with Clara Films, headed by Clara Larraín from Chile, about joining the project as a new co-producer.
Recently, Zuñiga co-directed “No One Knows We Play Today” with Valentina Maurel, whose “Forever Your Maternal Animal” played to acclaim and a prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival’s Un Certain Regard. Speaking on the momentum of Costa Rican cinema, the director says that “in recent years, films with very different voices and approaches have emerged, many of them led by women directors with bold, sharp and deeply personal perspectives.”
“I’ve been lucky enough to be close to some of those processes as an assistant director, working with Nathalie Álvarez Mesén on ‘Clara Sola,’ Sofía Quirós on ‘Land of Ashes,’ Valentina Maurel on ‘I Have Electric Dreams’ and ‘Forever Your Maternal Animal,’ among other projects,” he notes.
He added: “After working on more than 20 Costa Rican films, I’ve seen how our cinema has expanded the ways in which it represents the country. There isn’t just one way of making films from Costa Rica, and I think that diversity is one of our greatest strengths. These films are finding their own languages, their own relationships with the territory and an international presence that, a few years ago, seemed much harder to achieve.”
Despite the recent success of his national cinema, Zuñiga issues an alert that the growth exists “alongside a great deal of fragility.” “We still work within small and unstable funding structures. Very often, every film has to reinvent from scratch the conditions that will allow it to exist. The challenge now is to turn international recognition into continuity, resources and better working conditions for the people making films in the country.”