Free and Open to the Public
Date: Friday, Feb. 16
Time: 2:00 pm
Location: MSU Library – Green Room (Directions HERE)
Genre: Documentary
Language: Spanish with English Subtitles
Country: Costa Rica 🇨🇷
Duration: 63 minutes
Presented by Marco Diaz-Muñoz, Basic Language Coordinator for Spanish, Assistant Professor, Department of Romance and Classical Studies
ABOUT THE FILM
This is the story of a tiny country that made a decision to do something that no other country had ever done — it decided to abolish its army and declare peace to the world. And this is the story of a young boy who grew up in that country, and how he ended up challenging — and sometimes even convincing — the greatest powers in the world to follow Costa Rica’s example.
This film is a Don Quixote-like saga with great historical touchstones — Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, Cold War politics and Communism, Central American War and Peace. It follows a slight, academic, and most unlikely hero over the course of more than fifty years, as he travels the world in a quest to stop the spread of the weapons of war. In the end, it is a story about the triumph of reason, of the sparrow triumphing over the eagle, and how the impossible dream can sometimes come true.
ABOUT THE DIRECTOR
Dawn Gifford Engle is an activist, filmmaker and Co-Founder and Executive Director of the The PeaceJam Foundation, a nonprofit organization led by thirteen Nobel Peace Laureates and a global leader in developing young leaders and engaging adults and youth in their local and global communities.
Dawn began her career as an economist, working 12 years for the U.S. Congress in Washington, D.C. She was the youngest women ever appointed to serve as Chief of Staff to a U.S. Senator. In 1991, after meeting the Dalai Lama, she co-founded Colorado Friends of Tibet, and in 1994, she and husband Ivan Suvanjieff began working together to create the PeaceJam program, which has been recognized internationally for excellence in peace education.
MSU Latinx Film Festival 