“Presos” or Imprisoned has become the first Costa Rican film to be part of the digital platform Netflix.

The movie, directed by Esteban Ramirez, and starring Natalia Arias and Leynar Gómez, was filmed entirely in Costa Rica and released in 2015. It tells the story of a young girl that due to her job begins a friendship with a prison inmate.

Imprisoned is offered by Netflix as of January 19 for 190 countries and for a term of 18 months. The film will not be available for the U.S.A viewership because the company has a previous contract with HBO for distribution in this country, which will begin showing this drama film as of August.

Director Esteban Ramirez, told Costa Rican newspaper La Nacion “This is a great joy. I take it as the result of almost 20 years of efforts, directing, producing and achieving different things in this adventure of film making. It is a joy to represent my country; this does not only benefit me, but all Costa Rican film industry”.

According to Ramirez, it was the film’s distributing company Cineplex (Colombian corporation) that offered the film to Netflix, and after being analyzed it was accepted. Ramirez also mentioned that the fact that actor Leynar Gómez was part of Netflix show Narcos, also had a lot to do with the decision, “In one way or another, Gómex returned the favor. We helped him by sending his best scenes with Presos when he was doing the casting for Narcos; now, he is a known face is Netflix and that helped us”.

“Presos” is the second film in the region, after Guatemalan Ixcanul (2015), to be part of the Netflix platform.