Ernesto Jara Vargas (Costa Rica)

Ernesto Jara Vargas studied photography at the Colegio Universitario de Alajuela and audiovisual production at the Centro Nacional de Imagen in Costa Rica. In 2000 he received a scholarship from the Spanish Agency for International Cooperation to do a professional internship at Antena 3 Internacional in Madrid. In 2003 he founded La Pecera, an audiovisual production company with which he has made short and medium-length documentary and fiction films, as well as television spots and mass communication campaigns. He directed the documentary feature films El Codo del Diablo (2014) and Queremos tanto a Bruno (2018), and he is currently finishing the documentary feature film Altamar. Ernesto has taught film analysis and appreciation at the Center for Technology and Visual Arts (CETAV) in Costa Rica and works as a consultant in communication and audiovisual production for international, social, environmental and cultural organizations.

Dormir en el bosque Stefano, a 40-year-old Italian, lives with his two children (Teresa, 10, and Nicolás, 12) on a farm in a tropical forest in Costa Rica. He wants his children to grow up closer to nature and away from what he considers to be the harmful influences of modern life. Stefano intends to find harmony with his family in the middle of the forest but ends up finding that both the nature around him and his own human nature are more complex, unpredictable and threatening than expected.