NONPROFIT · IMPACT
GREEN COMMUNITIES
I met Jonathan as a documentary subject. Years later, his organization hired me.
CLIENT
Green Communities
RELATIONSHIP
Ten years in the region · client since 2024
SCOPE
Direction, cinematography, interviews, editing, stills
OUTPUT
One finished film · ongoing on-call production
THE SITUATION
Ten years ago I started following a movement of coffee farmers in Los Santos, Costa Rica. They were stepping away from the co-ops, building their own micro-mills, and taking on real financial risk to hold onto their farms and their families' legacy. That became a feature documentary I'm still making.
Jonathan was one of the people in it. He's from the region, and he carried the environmental thread of the story — what growing coffee does to the land, and what changing that would actually require.
Two years ago his organization hired me. Not to make a film about him, but about the work: helping farmers transition their land to organic. It's a change that costs a farmer money and yield well before it ever repays them, which is why almost nobody attempts it alone.
THE APPROACH
A decade of context, and a story that couldn't afford to blame anyone.
01
Ask what it's for, first
The film had to make a technical, unglamorous agricultural transition feel like a human decision. Nobody is moved by a soil amendment schedule. They're moved by a farmer who decided to risk a harvest on something he won't see the return on for years.
02
Earn the room, then shoot it
There was nothing to earn. I'd been coming back to this valley for a decade. The farmers knew me, Jonathan knew me, and I'd already filmed years of the story before this film existed.
There was nothing to earn. I'd been coming back to this valley for a decade. The farmers knew me, Jonathan knew me, and I'd already filmed years of the story before this film existed.
03
Absorb the complexity
Remote farms, navigating in Spanish. The harder part was tone — environmental films tend to find someone to blame, and here the people you'd blame are the ones who have to change. It had to honor the community and still make the case for stewardship.
THE WORK
GREEN COMMUNITIES — THE ORGANIZATION'S STORY · RUNTIME
TARRAZÚ — TRAILER FOR THE FEATURE DOCUMENTARY
Ten years of stills
Photographs from the same valley, the same farms, and the same families — across a decade. This is the part of the archive nobody can fly in and replicate.
"Jonathan's quote — you said this is easy to get. Get it. It's the single highest-value asset on this page, because it comes from someone who knew you as a filmmaker for eight years before he ever became a client. Ask him to speak to that specifically."
Jonathan Cerdas
Founder/CEO
Green Communities
OUTCOME
WHAT IT DID
10 years
following the same story in the same valley
2 films
from one relationship — one finished, one still in progress
On call
still filming for the organization as needed
WHY THIS TOOK MORE THAN A SHOOT DAY
A crew flown in for a week makes a good film about organic coffee. Hillsides, drying beds, hands sorting beans — all of it true, none of it particular.
I didn't meet Jonathan on this job. I met him a decade ago, as a character in a story that had nothing to do with his foundation, before there was a client or a budget or a brief. That's why his organization called me — not because I was the best-priced option in Costa Rica, but because I already knew the valley, the season, and him.