The Nicaraguan revolution in the Costa Rican cinema of the 2000s: El compromiso and Princesas Rojas or the nostalgia of a political and social activism

Abstract

A little more than thirty years after the end of the armed conflicts in Nicaragua, following the triumph of the revolution and the counter-revolutionary war, filmmakers in the region are looking back to relive one of the most traumatic periods of war in Central American history and to question, in turn, the relationship between the past and the current political and social context of the countries that were affected by the impact of the conflict. This article aims to analyse two films that contextualise the Sandinista Revolution (1979) and the counter-revolutionary civil war (1979-1989), made at the beginning of the second decade of the 2000s by two Costa Rican filmmakers of different generations, in order to demonstrate how political commitment and revolutionary activism are represented in their works. Our reflection is focused on the films El compromiso (2012) by Óscar Castillo and Princesas Rojas (2013) by Laura Astorga and aims to demonstrate the intention of reconstruction of the collective and individual memory of both filmmakers, under their own experiences, through the prism of nostalgia.