Executive producer | ALE VARGAS CARBALLO

Alejandra Vargas Carballo is a Costa Rican producer and founder of Noche Negra Producciones (2018), a company dedicated to supporting emerging talent and producing stories with distinctive voices, with a focus on female perspectives and dissident narratives.

In 2025, she will premiere the feature film If We Don’t Burn, How Do We Light Up the Night in the New Directors competition at the San Sebastián International Film Festival. Her most recent release, the documentary Guian by Nicole Chi, premiered at Visions du Réel 2023, won Best Feature Length Film at the MINT Chinese Film Festival (UK, 2024), and has collected several other awards. Guian is currently available on FILMIN (Spain) and on GILOO in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, the Philippines, South Korea, and Japan.

Her credits also include La Picada by Felipe Zúñiga (Guadalajara 2022, Thessaloniki 2023, Best Director at SANFIC 2022), and two short films by Kim Torres: Suncatcher (Locarno 2021) and Night Light (Cannes 2022), the latter being the first Costa Rican production to compete for the Palme d’Or.

Previously, she produced her debut feature The Heat After the Rain by Cristóbal Serra Jorquera (Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival 2015) and received Costa Rica’s National Culture Award in 2018 for the documentary series San José de Noche.

Vargas Carballo is a graduate in Audiovisual Production from the University of Costa Rica and holds a Master’s degree in Distribution and Film Business from ECAM (Spain). In 2019, she was selected for the Locarno Academy Industry Club and invited to participate in the Locarno Pro think tank U30.

Director and screenwriter | KIM TORRES

Kim Torres is a Costa Rican-American director and screenwriter, born in the United States to a Cuban-Costa Rican family and raised in Costa Rica. After earning a degree in Communication Sciences with an emphasis in Audiovisual Production from the University of Costa Rica, she pursued further studies in Screenwriting for Film and Television at the Centro de Capacitación Cinematográfica in Mexico City. During seven years based in Mexico, Kim worked as a screenwriter on films and television shows for Netflix and other streaming platforms.

The short film Night Light (2022) became the first Costa Rican film to be nominated for a Palme d’Or in the Official Selection of the Cannes Film Festival. Other short films, including Suncatcher (2021) and The Moon Will Contain Us (2023), have been presented at prestigious venues such as the New York Film Festival, the Locarno Film Festival, Mar del Plata, and New Directors/New Films at MoMA and Lincoln Center. The debut feature, If We Don’t Burn, How Do We Light Up the Night, will have its world premiere in the New Directors Competition of the San Sebastián International Film Festival, following its development through programs such as La Fabrique Cinéma and Cinéma de Demain Focus Co Pro at the Cannes Film Festival.

In 2022, Kim was invited as a Guest Artist at CalArts University. In 2023, they joined Berlinale Talents as a director and screenwriter, and in 2024 became part of the Locarno Filmmakers Academy.

Director | NICOLE CHI AMÉN

Nicole Chi is a Costa Rican writer, director, and producer of Chinese descent, currently based in San José. Nicole graduated from Mass Communication with an emphasize in Audiovisual Production from the University of Costa Rica, and holds an MFA in Film and Media Production from the University of Texas at Austin. She was a Fulbright Fellow.

She’s been recognized with awards like the Director’s Guild of America’s Student Film Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement for her short film COMADRE and the AFS’s Texas New Voices Grant for her first feature length documentary GUIÁN. In 2024 she was awarded a Princess Grace Award For Emerging Artists in Film and Animation.

Her first feature length documentary GUIÁN, a very personal project about her grandmother, and her Asian-Latino identity; was awarded a Special Mention at Visions du Réel (2023) in the Burning Lights Competition.

Her most recent short film, LOS MOSQUITOS, premiered at SXSW (2024) in the Narrative Shorts Competition, and has earned awards like the Best Latina Director at LALIFF (2024). This short film is a winner of The Gotham’s Film&Media Institute Short Film Showcase in partnership with Focus Features and JetBlue Airlines.

Her work has been selected in festivals like Telluride, Holly Shorts, LALIFF, New Orleans Film Festival, BOGOSHORTS, and Cinélatino Rencontres de Toulouse.

Nicole is currently in development of her first narrative feature film, EL SOL DE ORO and her second feature length documentary A FUTURE OF NOSTALGIAS.