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Spain’s Federation, Chile’s Alma Films and the Dominican Republic’s Larimar Films have boarded Kryzz Gautier’s “Echoes” ahead of the film’s presentation at the upcoming Costa Rica Media Market. The film, produced by
Gautier’s Reclaimed Entertainment, will be predominantly shot in Spain, with principal production expected to take place in late 2027.
The queer period romance is set at a colonial sugar plantation in the Dominican Republic, where historian Catalina and her girlfriend Salomé discover an artifact that sends them back to the 17th century. There, the two are privy to a forbidden relationship between two women who look exactly like them: Yara, an enslaved woman, and Leonor, the governor’s daughter. To escape this new reality, the duo must confront the weight of their lineage and decide whether their love can break the cycle or if they’re doomed to remain trapped forever.
Gautier has previously written for HBO and developed projects for studios such as Sony, Universal, Stage 13, and Film4. Her projects have also been distributed by HBO Max, Hulu and DUST. The director won Cannes Fantastic Pavilion’s Fantastic Lab and has been named one of Netflix’s directors on the rise. “Echoes” was a finalist at this year’s Fantastic Lab Central America & Caribbean, coordinated by Costa Rican film commissioner Marysela Zamora and Grupo Morbido CEO Pablo Guisa. Launched at the inaugural Costa Rica Media Market last year in partnership with Grupo Morbido,the open call lured 55 projects from across the region.
Speaking with Variety ahead of presenting “Echoes” in Costa Rica, Gautier says the initial idea for the film stemmed from a realization that, after over 15 years working in Hollywood, she had never written a script in her native language. “I was born and raised in the Dominican Republic, yet all of my sold or produced work had been in English,” she adds. “That felt like a gap I needed to confront. Once I decided my next script would be in Spanish, the rest came surprisingly naturally.”
The director recalls previously developing an anthology series inspired by the East Asian legend of the Red String of Fate, the idea that two soulmates stay connected by an unbreakable red thread.
“Every episode followed the same two actors meeting in a different period of history, falling in love, and ultimately being torn apart for one reason or another,” she notes. “It was one of those projects that kept hitting walls. I constantly heard some version of ‘it’s too expensive’ or ‘nobody wants period pieces.’ For whatever reason, I just couldn’t let it go.”
Asked about setting the film in a sugar plantation, Gautier says they are “some of the most haunted places in the Americas, whether you believe in ghosts or not.” “They’re places built on slavery, extraction, and unimaginable violence, yet they’re often photographed as beautiful ruins or treated as historical curiosities. I wanted to restore the emotional weight of those spaces and ask what it would actually mean to love, desire, and survive inside them.”
“Setting the film in the Dominican Republic also felt essential because it’s where so much of the colonial project in the Americas began,” she emphasizes. “ Dominicans have inherited that history even if we often refuse to acknowledge it. For me, the gothic horror and magical realism aren’t simply stylistic choices. There are ways of making that inheritance visible.”
To Gautier, it was also vital to center queer Afro-Caribbean women in the story. “We’ve always existed, but we’ve rarely been allowed to occupy the emotional center of stories,” she says. “Especially in genre or period pieces. That absence felt worth interrogating. I wasn’t interested in rewriting history. I was interested in revealing the lives that history has chosen not to preserve.”
When it comes to blending genres in “Echoes,” Gautier says that, to her, genre has “never been an escape from reality” but always “a way of getting closer to it.” “The history of the Caribbean is so full of violence, erasure, and inherited trauma that realism alone almost felt insufficient. Gothic horror gave me a cinematic language to externalize those things.”
“At the same time, genre has an incredible ability to smuggle difficult conversations into spaces audiences don’t always expect,” she continues. “You can walk into a horror film thinking you’re there to be entertained and suddenly find yourself confronting colonialism, queerness, grief, or inherited violence. That’s always been exciting to me.”
As for how she chose her co-production partners for the project, Gautier says they all share “the same vision and ambition for the film.” This is the sixth project the director makes in collaboration with Cristóbal Güell from the Chilean production company Alma Films, a producer she says is “deeply committed as I am to championing stories about Latinos by Latinos” and has “a remarkable ability to connect the right people and make ambitious projects happen.”
Federation Spain came on board after “Echoes” participated in the industry program of the San Sebastián Film Festival. “Because roughly 70% of ‘Echoes’ will shoot in Spain with a predominantly Spanish cast, I needed partners with both world-class production experience and access to Spain’s top creative talent. Vanessa and Juan have an extraordinary track record, both in Spain and internationally, and they bring exactly that.”
“‘Echoes’ reflects Kryzz’s vision: an intimate story that explores identity, legacy and the weight of the past with a contemporary sensibility,” says Juan Sola, CEO of Federation. “The co-production between Chile, the Dominican Republic and Spain offers the ideal framework to give life to a film with clear international potential.”
As for Larimar Films, Gautier says she knew from the beginning she needed another “exceptional Dominican partner with deep knowledge of the local industry, film law, incentives, crews, and logistics.” “Over the past 15 years, Larimar has become one of the Dominican Republic’s premier production companies, with an impressive slate of both local and international productions. For a film this personal, I honestly couldn’t imagine putting it in better hands.”
“We boarded ‘Echoes’ because it brings together contemporary romance, historical drama and the supernatural without losing its emotional truth,” notes Antonio Alma, president of Larimar Films. “It is culturally specific, visually ambitious and universal in the questions it raises about love, memory, freedom and belonging.”
Elsa Turull de Alma, producer at Larimar Films, says she is “always looking for stories that connect with audiences through the heart.” “From our very first conversation, I could feel the extraordinary time, commitment and passion Kryzz has poured into ‘Echoes.'”
