Bringing Movie Making to Costa Rica

Movie makers are always on the lookout for beneficial locations for their productions, the Costa Rica government is exploring the idea of granting incentives to attract international film and television productions to take full advantage of these investment opportunities.

President Carlos Alvarado is supporting the legislature in discussions for an initiative to promote investment and development of international productions of films, documentaries, series, commercials and music videos in Costa Rica.

Despite the many other countries in the region who offer tax incentives or cash refunds to companies in the industry, Costa Rica intends to compete with them to bring that investment capital here.

“In the last three years we have documented almost 114 million dollars in projects that valued coming to Costa Rica,” José Castro, film commissioner of the Foreign Trade Promoter, a public entity that promotes the initiative.

He stated that with the proper incentives the level of investment could increase “more than 345 million dollars injected into the Costa Rican economy,” thanks to the production chain generated by a film business. “This project is part of an agenda to reactivate the tourism sector,” declared Tourism Minister Gustavo Segura.

The initiative seeks to exempt taxes on income, as well as on the temporary importation of equipment and materials used in filming. It also plans to expedite the granting of visas to the personnel involved and facilities to process the required permits.

While Costa Rica has occasionally attracted some international productions, such as the films After Earth, 1492: Conquest of Paradise, Congo, or many other films shot partially here. Other films that were supposed to be set in Costa Rica, were not actually filmed here.

“Every time film productions come, there is an impact on tourism, because they hire transportation, lodging, food services, and link other sectors, such as actors and technical equipment for scenography, costumes, video and sound”, highlighted Minister Segura.

Castro noted that the presence of internationally recognized actors and the use of local sceneries in films can create a positive image for the country. “We are interested in generating in Costa Rica a phenomenon like the one that New Zealand had with The Lord of the Rings,” the film trilogy based on the work of JRR Tolkien, which attracted visitors to that island country and turned it into a cinema post-production center

Castro indicated that Costa Rica has, among its advantages, a diverse set of locations as movie back drops close to each other, which allows lowering production costs. “I tell the producers that they can film the sunrise in the Caribbean and that same day film the sunset in the Pacific without having to take a plane,” said Castro. Likewise, they can go from a volcano to a beach or a jungle in a short time.

The film commissioner said that Costa Rica hopes to initially attract projects of 3 to 5 million dollars, and in a few years, with more experience, to receive larger productions. “We have studies that show that for every dollar granted in incentives (for film productions), 2.6 times more is received from investment funds,” thanks to linkages with local services that do pay taxes, Castro explained. “It is an industry that energizes the local economy,” he added.

With these incentives in place, we may see an increase of Pura Vida in Hollywood.