Resilience

Costa Rica’s highest mountain witnesses the inspiring journey of a woman overcoming cancer.


Director – Andres Bronnimann

Andrés is a Costa Rican/Swiss/Mexican independent filmmaker based in around the world. Throughout his career, he has traveled to more than 30 countries, creating music videos, web-series, and commercials for different brands, artists, and organizations.

His work focuses on the interconnectedness between the macro and the micro; between socio-political issues and our day-to-day reality. With a defined visual style and a naturalistic approach to storytelling, his portfolio encompasses fiction and non-fiction, short and long format content, yet always with the aim of sparking critical thinking for young global audiences.

Director Statement

Across our lives, we’ve all known someone whose life has been impacted by cancer. Perhaps it’s a relative or a friend, or perhaps it’s yourself. It’s a disease that does not discriminate between cultures or backgrounds, and whose pain extends to the patient’s close circle. When Christine Raine, the main character of the film, tapped me in order to tell her story of overcoming cancer through a philosophy of resilience, mindfulness, and love; I saw her life-experience as one that could inspire and empower other people going through hard times. We wanted to create a eulogy to the cancer patient, not in order to celebrate it, but rather, to perceive the disease as a vehicle for growth and resilience. The film was shot at the tallest mountain of Costa Rica, a visual metaphor of the internal peak Christine had to climb.

Personally, shooting this film was one of the most challenging processes of my life… not only did we choose to develop the storyline as we ascended through dangerous hills in a dogma-95 fashion, but during the climb, I ended up breaking my leg and having a whole rescue operation underway to bring me down from the mountain. This also happened during the pandemic; which made the rescue operation even more complex. It was a moment I will never forget; and the small team of 5 people involved in creating this piece, ended up forming a strong emotional bond through a shared notion of what “resilience” meant in their lives. We truly hope that this intimate and personal film can reach the hearts and minds of the millions of people who have been touched by this illness.

Director:

Andres Bronnimann

Production:

Costa Rica

Year of Production

2021 - Premiere

Duration:

16:23