Costa Rican cinema reached a new milestone Friday, May 22, when actresses Daniela Marín Navarro and Mariángel Villegas shared the Best Actress award in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard section with Mexican actress Marina de Tavira for Siempre soy tu animal materno, the latest feature from Costa Rican filmmaker Valentina Maurel.
The Cannes Film Festival’s official winners list named De Tavira, Marín Navarro and Villegas as the joint winners for their performances in Maurel’s film, known internationally as Forever Your Maternal Animal. The award came in one of Cannes’ main official sections and placed Costa Rican talent on one of cinema’s most watched stages.
The film follows Elsa, played by Marín Navarro, who returns to Costa Rica after years studying in Europe and finds her younger sister living alone in the family home, increasingly withdrawn from those around her. Their parents remain absorbed in their own lives, leaving the sisters to confront the family tensions that still bind them.
The win is also a landmark for Maurel. Siempre soy tu animal materno places her in Cannes’ Official Selection through Un Certain Regard, marking a major step for Costa Rican feature filmmaking at the festival. Spanish-language coverage described Maurel as the first Costa Rican filmmaker to enter the official Cannes selection with a feature, while earlier Costa Rican films had appeared in parallel Cannes sections.
Maurel has built much of her work around a San José rarely seen in tourism campaigns. Instead of beaches, volcanoes and polished postcard imagery, the film turns toward a more urban and uneasy Costa Rica. In earlier comments about the film, she described her interest in the chaos of San José and in family relationships shaped by artistic ambition, absence and emotional distance.
That choice gives the Cannes recognition more weight than a single festival prize. Siempre soy tu animal materno arrives as Costa Rican filmmakers continue pushing beyond the narrow images often expected from Central America. Maurel has said the region is often expected to tell stories only about violence, drugs or crisis, while her film looks instead at intimacy, ambiguity and family life.
Marín Navarro, who accepted the award in Cannes alongside Maurel, used the moment to point back home. “¡Que aguante el cine costarricense!” she told EFE after the ceremony, adding that making films in Costa Rica remains difficult because funding is limited, but that the win showed it can be done.
De Tavira’s presence also gives the film international visibility. The Mexican actress was nominated for an Academy Award for her supporting role in Roma, according to the Academy’s official 2019 nominations list.
For Costa Rica, the award lands at a time when the country’s film industry is still small but increasingly visible abroad. Maurel previously won Cannes’ Cinéfondation first prize in 2017 with Paul est là, later returned to Costa Rica to make Tengo sueños eléctricos, and has become part of a generation of women filmmakers bringing Costa Rican stories to major international festivals.
The Cannes honor does not solve the structural problems facing Costa Rican cinema. Funding remains limited, production is difficult, and filmmakers often rely on international partnerships to get projects made. But Friday’s award gave Costa Rican actors, directors and producers a rare moment of global recognition.
For Marín Navarro, Villegas and Maurel, it was also a statement that Costa Rican stories can reach the highest levels of cinema without softening their edges or turning the country into a backdrop for tourism.
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