Costa Rica Below-the-Line Talents to Track

Costa Rica’s most prized assets – aside from its unparalleled locations – are its highly skilled crews, known for their depth of experience, strong work ethic and bilingual skills.

Honed through years of on-set experience – paired with formal training – on both large and small-scale productions, including feature films, advertising campaigns, reality shows, series and documentaries, Costa Rica’s film crews are among the country’s most valuable resources.

Here are 5 Below-the-Line Talents to Track (in alphabetical order):

Violeta Grancelli, Line Producer, Scout, Fixer

With a background in International Relations and extensive experience in film and television support, Grancelli manages full-service production assistance in Costa Rica, including location scouting, budgeting, logistics, gear rental and tax rebate coordination. Originally from Buenos Aires, she grew up in a culturally rich environment and traveled throughout Europe before moving to Costa Rica. After working as a wardrobe assistant on a Sony Pictures production, she co-founded Costa Rica Filming Locations in 2012 with partner Manohar Tahilramani. “My favorite location in Costa Rica is the North Pacific region of Guanacaste. Being a producer, I really appreciate it when an area has a good range of beautiful locations combined with the services I know a production will need and this area certainly has both. Beaches, rivers, waterfalls, volcanoes, etc. are very close to accommodations, supermarkets, hardware stores and an airport,” she explains, adding that her company was the first to apply the tax rebate while shooting “Celebrity Bear Hunt” for Netflix last year. “’Paddington’ [2014] was one of our company’s first projects. It was really beautiful to see the working process of Gary Williamson, the production designer and to work alongside [producer] David Heyman, who was very involved throughout. We worked on this project for six-to-eight months, with three weeks of filming in Costa Rica.”

Olga Madrigal, Production Designer

With 22 years of experience, Madrigal has worked on over 25 feature films across Europe and Latin America. Her award-winning work spans fiction, short films, music videos, TV series, and hundreds of commercials. A four-time Best Art Direction winner, she also works as an Art Director and Costume Designer, approaching each scene as a carefully crafted visual composition. With a journalism background and a postgraduate degree in Latin American Studies, she sees filmmaking as a social responsibility rooted in intentional, meaningful design.

After she was hired last year for the Hallmark movie “A Costa Rican Wedding,” she was asked to join its team. “We met in March 2024 and by August 2024, I was at an airport about to film two movies in heavenly places,” she says, adding: “Since then, we have made three films and I am just a few days away from starting my fourth film.” Madrigal has also worked on all of filmmaker-Costa Rica Film Festival director Patricia Velasquez’s features. She notes: “Working with Patricia always means stepping out of your comfort zone. Her way of exploring languages, her unique approach to presenting uncomfortable situations, the finesse of presenting a great truth and gently striking… it’s a pleasure and a great joy to be able to explore these forms from a visual perspective.”

Sergio Miranda – Producer & Owner, Costa Rica Production Services

Born in Costa Rica’s capital of San José, Miranda brings over 25 years of production expertise across Latin America. He co-founded the Costa Rican Chamber of the Audiovisual Industry, helped launch the Film Commission and lobbied for the Film Investment Law that introduced a cash rebate. As head of Costa Rica Production Services, he’s managed up to 130 international shoots for the likes of Sony, Netflix, Amazon, Paramount, National Geographic, and more. Miranda has worked with such prominent directors as Ridley Scott (“1492, Conquest of Paradise”), Mel Gibson (“Apocalypto”), M. Night Shyamalan (“After Earth”), Robert Rodriguez (“Spy Kids”) and Frank Marshall (“Congo”), offering deep local insight, bilingual crews and logistics across Costa Rica’s diverse locations. Both “After Earth” and “Congo” required several types of locations. “Because it’s a small country, it was not that difficult to move their caravans across various locations,” he notes. He recently worked on ABC’s reality show “Bachelor in Paradise” which took over the Azura Beach Resort in Samara for two months and involved close to 300 people, including some 100 local hires.

Medina is also developing The Sanctuary, an eco-tourism destination in Costa Rica that protects the natural environment while offering unique opportunities for mindful investment.

Mickey Ryan – Location Manager, Producer, Director

Ryan hails from Puerto Viejo, Limón, situated on the Caribbean coast of the country. Of Nicaraguan and New York heritage, he fuses Caribbean identity with a global perspective. A graduate of Universidad Veritas, he brings over seven years of experience in international production for Apple TV, HBO, Netflix and Amazon, among others. His film credits include Sofia Quiros’ “Land of Ashes, ”Nathalie Alvarez’s lauded “Clara Sola” and Valentina Maurel’s Locarno winner “I Have Electric Dreams.” He directed the documentary “El Gran Error” (2024) and worked on “La Casa de Playa” (2024) in various capacities. His TV credits include German series “The Last Cop” and Amazon reality show, “The Pack.” He’s also worked on a number of ads for HBO Max’s “The Last of Us” and has produced for global brands Bacardi, Corona, Hilton and HEB (Super Bowl 2019). Committed to Caribbean storytelling, Mickey combines technical expertise with cultural advocacy to strengthen Costa Rica’s Atlantic coast cinema. “Every part of Costa Rica has its charm but the Caribbean is my favorite. Limón, where I’m from, is the most underdeveloped part of the country and has a mainly Afro-Indigenous population, with a strong Jamaican influence,” he says.

Nicolas Wong, Director of Photography

Born in Lima, Peru in 1988 to a Peruvian father and Chilean mother, Wong has lived in Costa Rica since 1993. A graduate in film direction from the Veritas University, which has defined a certain generation of Costa Rican filmmakers, he has worked as a cinematographer on 23 feature films across Latin America and the U.S. His work has screened at Cannes (Un Certain Regard, Directors’ Fortnight), Sundance, Locarno, Venice, Toronto, and more. He produced “Domingo and the Mist” (Cannes 2022) and is a voting member of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences. Wong has received Costa Rica’s National Culture Award three times for his work in film. His credits include some of the most consequential films to come out of Central and South America, including “La Llorona” by Guatemala’s Jayro Bustamante, “Querido Tropico” by Ana Endara of Panama and Peru’s “Mistura,” starring Barbara Mori. “I choose to work on projects that I really like, mostly from Latin America,” he says, adding that he works on an average of two a year. Upcoming films include “La Hija Cóndor” by Álvaro Olmos Torrico, “La Casa de Playa” by Kim Elizondo Navarro and “No One Knows We Play Today” by Valentina Maurel and Felipe Zúñiga.