Costa Rica’s ‘El Camino’ wins top Latin American film award in Chile

Tico Times August 29, 2008

“El Camino” (The Road), a film by Costa Rican writer, director and producer Ishtar Yasin, has won the award for Best Latin American Film at the SANFIC festival in Santiago, Chile, adding another trophy to Yasin´s now cluttered mantelpiece.

The film, centered on two Nicaraguan children´s experience with their parent´s immigration, won awards at festivals in Guadalajara, Mexico, Berlin, Germany and Fribourg, Switzerland, and was Costa Rica´s first showing at France´s coveted Cannes International Film Festival.

“El Camino” faced fierce competition from Brazilian film “O banheiro do papa” (The Pope´s Toilet), a favorite at San Sebastian, Spain, and in its home Sao Paolo, as well as nominees from Argentina, Chile, Mexico and Uruguay.

Yasin´s work was picked “for being a film that narrates the vast subject of Central American immigration, locating it very sensitively in few characters that convey their specific problems and longings without falling into broad-sweeping discourse,” the jury said, according to a news bulletin by the director.

The jury also said it prized the “story´s literary quality and the children´s talented performance.”

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