Ingo Niehaus

A 12 year-old girl finds friendship on an internet chat room with a 14 year-old boy without realizing that the boy is actually an older man who is part of a child prostitution ring.

The film is a call of conscience about the disappearance of forests in the country. Great industrial needs have created a greater demand for wood, the necessary expansion of livestock and agriculture is causing the destruction of forests in regions where only forests can provide an acceptable economic return. In view of the irrational progress of tree felling and in view of the slowness with which state institutions intervene in this problem - determining for the future of the country - it was decided to make this film.

This film presents three possible techniques or methods that make it possible to meet the growing demand for wood without the country becoming a desert: spontaneous reforestation, carried out by the country's youth, technical and commercial plantation, and the comprehensive use of forests. . Scientists and farmers, peasants and young people express their opinions on these techniques and on the critical situation that the country is going through. The "lone witness", a tree abandoned to its fate in the middle of infertile pastures in the Puriscal area, leaves graphic testimony about the felling of trees taken to the absurd.

This film was originally made for the International Conference on Human Settlements (HABITAT) which was held in Vancouver, Canada. Taking as an example the production and marketing of bananas and the prevailing conditions in the world market - dominated by the virtual monopoly of three multinational companies -, it is shown how as a result of this monopolistic domination, the Costa Rican State has stopped receiving equitable taxes for what that, in the end, the housing and public services offered by the country are characterized as those of an underdeveloped society. The attempt made since 1974 by a group of banana-producing countries, aimed at improving sales prices to multinationals and raising taxes; The resulting “banana war” are examples of the enormous efforts that small banana countries have to make to achieve greater justice in the prevailing market conditions.

The film gives us an idea of how the Youth Symphony Orchestra operates, which was created taking into account a young member and a future violinist named Iván, who alternates soccer with violin exercises.

At the dawn of Independence, our society desperately seeks a way out of the economic and social confinement that the Spanish colony has imposed on it. The cultivation of coffee is presented as a viable option, but the landowners refuse to grow it, fearful of losing their colonial privileges.