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Álvaro Torres Crespo On Capturing With the Poignant ‘Ella Se Detiene a Mirar’ How Fishermen Are Turning to Drug Trafficking in Small Corners of Costa Rica
Director Álvaro Torres Crespo talks new doc 'Ella se detiene a mirar and the 'effervescent movement of young filmmakers' in Costa Rica.
In his new documentary “Ella se detiene a mirar” (“She Stops to Look,” in literal translation), world premiering at the Costa Rica International Film Festival, filmmaker Álvaro Torres Crespo poignantly captures this pained end of a way of life. At first, the director focused on the kids living in the community, but gradually understood he wanted to tell this story through the eyes of Yesenia, a woman from a family of artisanal fishermen who quietly observed all that surrounded her, from the rising tides to the routine of her husband and their five children and the neighbors who slowly than steadily give up trading fishing in favor of drug trafficking. The result is a poetic, melancholic reflection on how the relationship between people and nature is changing in modern Costa Rica, a subject Crespo also explored in “Nosotros Las Piedras” as he chronicled a group of panners scouring rivers for gold in the country’s dense jungles four decades after the national government expelled them from their lands in the name of ecologic preservation.
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