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It’s been a long time coming but Costa Rica can now claim an Oscar-nominated below-the-line talent, sound and music editor Felipe Pacheco, who was recognized for his sound editing work on Ryan Coogler’s multi-Oscar
winning “Sinners.”
Based in Los Angeles, he moved there after earning a degree in film scoring at the prestigious Berklee College of Music. His extraordinary credits include Christopher Nolan’s epic Imax 70mm blockbuster “The Odyssey”and Oscar-winning “Oppenheimer,” “Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu” and Coogler’s “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.” In television, he worked on Ben Stiller’s “Severance,” which snagged him an Emmy nomination.
Throughout many of them, he has worked closely with Academy Award-winning composer Ludwig Göransson whom he first joined when they needed a Spanish-speaking music editor for the many Spanish songs in “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.” His trial by fire came when Göransson asked him to join him on “Oppenheimer.” “We finished ‘Black Panther’ on a Friday, and that weekend Ludwig called: ‘I need you on ‘Oppenheimer’ Monday.’ I expected to join a team of music editors, but instead I was suddenly working alongside Nolan, learning his process on the fly. It was intimidating, especially as a young Costa Rican, but not knowing what I didn’t know may have worked in my favor. It all came together— and that’s why I was invited back for his next film.”
That next film was “The Odyssey” where he relates that Nolan wanted to avoid the traditional orchestral sound often associated with historical epics. Instead, he asked Göransson to blend ancient Greek instruments with modern elements like synthesizers, creating a score that reflected a contemporary retelling of an ancient story. For the music team, it was a major creative challenge. Without the emotional power of strings or brass, they had to reinvent how the music conveyed intimacy and scale – using flutes, percussion and constant experimentation. “It was an absolute nightmare… but it was shockingly successful.”
“Working on ‘Sinners’ was fun because it had a lot of on-set performances so they brought me in even from pre-production. The whole music team was working with the actors teaching them how to play instruments, how to sing and teaching them all the songs,” he recalls, adding that it was a highly collaborative job, with a lot of overlap between the music, dialogue and sound mixing departments.
He worked closely with the production sound team to capture every performance on set, avoiding re-records. “We just didn’t want it to feel like a music video.”
Here are five other Costa Rican Below-The-Line Talents to Track whose hard work and commitment to their craft may just earn them the ultimate reward in the future.
José “Chisco” Arce, Colorist
Through his production company, Maicero Prods, Arce has served as a colorist on a wide range of feature films, documentaries, episodic series and commercials. He has also worked as a filmmaker and cinematographer. His freelancer status has given him the freedom to tajke on jobs as far afield as Estonia, Saudi Arabia and Japan.
His main task is to balance the images so they all have a consistent exposure and correct any issues that may have occurred during filming, he explains. “Then I create the film’s final look. For example, a horror film might have a darker, more desaturated palette, while a comedy would have a brighter, more vibrant feel.”
His long list of credits takes in the Saudi Arabian fiction series “Kahilan,” Netflix Kuwait’s series, “The Exchange,” Japanese short “Together Alone” and Estonian short “Aurora Laul.”
However, one of his most satisfying jobs has been closer to home, the Honduran film “Eva” by William Reyes. “Although I joined the project later in the process, I collaborated closely with the director and cinematographer to shape the film’s visual progression. We designed a clear emotional arc: a warm, natural beginning, a darker and grayer middle as the story unfolds, and a final act that returns to a more hopeful reality. It worked very well for the film, which has been well received,” he says.
Arce is currently working on a Colombian production that hasn’t been officially announced yet, but will be revealed next week as part of the Toronto International Film Festival lineup.
Mauricio Esquivel, Production Designer
Esquivel would really like to act, but in the meantime, he has become a much sought-after production designer, art producer and editor whose credits include some of the most acclaimed films to come out of Costa Rica and the region, including Cannes Director’s Fortnight title “Clara Sola,” Locarno multi-winner “I Have Electric Dreams,” Berlin Panorama Audience Awardee “Memories of a Burning Body” and most recently Neto Villalobos’ “Love is the Monster.”
He has a degree in directing from the Veritas University and has written and directed two shorts, “Refugio” and “Pasajera.”
“Each project has been challenging in a different way. ‘I Have Electric Dreams’ was my first time leading the art department on a feature film, so stepping into that role was a major challenge. But ‘Love is the Monster” was probably the most demanding because we were filming six hours away from San José, in a difficult production environment, with only four weeks to shoot. The film also had a complex dystopian, alternate-world aesthetic that required a lot of conceptual work.”
Meanwhile, he is actively pursuing acting, currently training in the Meisner technique. “At heart, acting and directing are what I enjoy most, but I see every role as part of the same creative process. Sometimes a production design choice can achieve what a close-up or a line of dialogue cannot. If you want the audience to feel that a character is in love, for example, changing a costume from white to red might tell the story more effectively. That’s how I tend to think when conceptualizing a film, regardless of the role I’m in.”
Nayuribe Montero, Sound Designer
Based in Mexico, Montero has worked as a sound designer and production sound mixer over the past 10 years. She studied Film Sound at Cuba’s prominent International Film and Television School and holds a Master’s degree in Communication from the University of Costa Rica. Her credits include Edgar Ramirez-produced “It Would Be Night in Caracas”(Venice and TIFF), “Aurora”(Rotterdam) and “The Moon Will Contain Us” (Locarno).
Of the recent pics she’s worked on, “It Would Be Night in Caracas” was probably the most arduous, she says. “The film was set in Venezuela, but we were shooting in Mexico, which created a lot of challenges. Many extras couldn’t use their own voices because their accents didn’t match, so we had to rebuild much of the sound in post-production with dubbing and additional recordings to create an authentic Venezuelan atmosphere. We also captured and collected many environmental sounds to help complete the world. It was a process of constant reconstruction and creativity, both in production and post, especially with so many extras and large crowd scenes.”
Being a dancer has greatly informed her interest in filmmaking. “At film school, I started creating video dance pieces and became interested in documentary, so I’ve been exploring the intersection of both. Right now, I’m working on a documentary video dance project that combines these two worlds. For now, I feel more drawn to short films, although I’m not sure I’m ready to take on a feature yet,” she says.
“I also learned that movement is not just about choreography. A professor, Silvina Szperling, an Argentine biodanza teacher, helped me understand movement as a form of expression and how the body communicates on its own. That’s what I focus on now—not simply filming a dance, but exploring the physical language and expressiveness of the body.”
Kim Picado, Casting Director
Picado has expanded her roles from casting director to acting coach and most recently, intimacy coordinator during her 15+ years in the biz. Her approach is also informed by her training in non-violent communication.
She has worked as the casting director and acting coach on some of the top films from Costa Rica and elsewhere, including “Forever Your Maternal Animal” (Cannes 2026, Un Certain Regard), “I Have Electric Dreams” (Locarno 2022) and “If We Don’t Burn, How Do We Light Up the Night” (San Sebastian).
She led the casting for the acclaimed “Clara Sola,” which earned her the Dams Award for Best Casting Direction at the Torino Film Festival.
Reflecting on how she developed her career, she says: “When I started working in commercial casting, I noticed there was a gap between the language of audiovisual performance and the way actors were trained. Once I understood both worlds, I began creating processes that connected them. It became a personal mission, especially at a time when many directors preferred working only with non-professional actors.”
“I created a role for myself within the filmmaking process: accompanying actors and directors from the very beginning of casting, through rehearsals and into the set. I support the direction and the performers throughout the process, especially during complex scenes. It’s almost like an assistant director role, focused entirely on acting,” she adds.
Working on “I Have Electric Dreams,” which entailed working with children and a mix of professional and novice actors taught her that every film and every performer requires a unique approach. “Each process has to be designed individually, with a lot of attention to the actor’s needs and communication—something closely connected to my work in Nonviolent Communication.”
She is currently working on “Quemada” by Ardelia Maurel and at an acting workshop in Ecuador led by director Sarahí Echeverría.
Esteban Quesada, Line Producer
Throughout his 17-plus years in the industry, Quesada has worked in Europe, Latin America, the U.S. and South Africa. His credits range from E! Entertainment TV’s “Keeping Up with the Kardashians” to the first “Paddington Bear” in the beloved franchise.
He also made more than 10 documentaries on a variety of subjects, winning the best documentary award at the Chelsea Film Festival, New York with the docu “Joaquim Batica.”
Quesada’s most recent line producing gig was with “Breaking Bad” creator-producer Mark Johnson on “Hope,” the debut fiction feature of Emmy-winning documentarian Abigail Fuller, “Hope.”
“It was the first time Mark Johnson had worked in Costa Rica. He told me he’d been interested in filming there for years but the right project had never come along. The shoot lasted eight weeks, beginning with four weeks in the remote town of Pacaya, Cartago, followed by San José, where we filmed inside the National Theatre with support from the Costa Rican government. We also shot at several beaches and a waterfall in Guanacaste, showcasing a wide range of locations across the country.”
Most importantly, several key creative roles were led by Costa Rican professionals, including costume and makeup. “That gave the local team a much greater creative voice and allowed the production to reflect Costa Rican culture more authentically.” The crew grew to around 150–200 people, bringing together professionals from Costa Rica, the United States and Mexico.
For a line producer, budgeting is a key part of the process, he notes. “You have to calculate what the production will cost in the country, account for exchange rate fluctuations between the U.S. dollar and the Costa Rican colón, and factor in any available incentives.” For this project, they applied for Costa Rica’s 11.7% tax incentive, so all of those financial details had to be carefully considered throughout the planning process.
