Valentina Maurel, is a renowned Costa Rican filmmaker, who studied a master’s degree in film direction at the Institut Supérieur des Arts du Spectacle in Brussels, Belgium. Her thesis project “Paul is here” received the first prize at the Cinéfondation at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival. She has participated in multiple international festivals. One of her short films “Lucía en el limbo“, filmed in Costa Rica, contested at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival Critics’ Week, also at the Toronto International Film Festival, and also won first prize for a short fiction film at the Guanajuato International Film Festival as well as the San José Short Film Festival.
“I have electric dreams” is her first feature film as a scriptwriter and director, it is a Belgian, Costa Rican and French co-production, which won the Best Latin American Film Award at the San Sebastian Film Festival in Spain in September.
The Costa Rican filmmaker continues to achieve success as a director with the extraordinary film “I have Electric Dreams” which reflects the family reality of many young people in Latin America and other regions.
The renowned director was recently awarded the first prize at the 63rd edition of the Thessaloniki International Festival in Greece with which he positions his artistic career in the world of entertainment and universal culture. “The Alejandro de Oro rewarded the beautiful and tender portrait of the way to accept the defects of the loved one,” explained the festival jury on Sunday, which also awarded the protagonist of the film, Reinaldo Amien Gutiérrez, the award for best actor.
Reflecting the Latin American reality
Maurel’s feature film debut tells the story of Eva, a 16-year-old girl of recently divorced parents, who reluctantly lives with her mother and little sister, longing to live with her father. The problem is that the father has violent outbursts and is living a kind of new youth, sharing a house with a friend.
Valentina Maurel said, “There is always a great duality in the characters, sometimes the best qualities of a person go through the same place as their worst defects,” the filmmaker said during the contest.
With this Cultural film series, the scriptwriter-director Valentina Maurel exalts the artistic talent that the Central American country possesses on international stages.
