5 Best Movies Set in or About Nicaragua

5 Movies Set in or About Nicaragua

Foreign-led films whose sustained setting or subject remains centered on Nicaragua.

1. 

   1. Under Fire

   1983

   During the 1979 Sandinista revolution, three American journalists covering the conflict in Nicaragua find their professional detachment collapsing as they are drawn personally into the war and its moral stakes. A gripping political drama.

   Why & details

   Curator’s note: A foreign-journalist drama centered on the Nicaraguan Revolution and fall of Somoza.

2. 

   2. Walker

   1987

   In the mid-19th century, the American adventurer William Walker leads a band of mercenaries into Nicaragua and seizes power, declaring himself president in an increasingly deranged colonial fantasy. Alex Cox's wild, anachronistic anti-imperialist satire based on true events.

   Why & details

   Curator’s note: A historical satire about American filibuster William Walker's seizure of Nicaragua.

3. 

   3. Latino

   1985

   A Latino U.S. Green Beret sent to train Contra rebels fighting Nicaragua's Sandinista government confronts a crisis of conscience as he sees the human cost of the covert war. Haskell Wexler's impassioned political drama.

4. 

   4. Striker

   1987

   A tough mercenary is hired to spring a journalist from a Sandinista prison in Nicaragua, teaming with a local woman for the mission — only to be captured and betrayed. A pulpy 1980s action film.

5. 

   5. Stars at Noon

   2022

   In present-day Nicaragua, a stranded American journalist and an enigmatic English businessman fall into a feverish affair, only to find themselves ensnared in a web of surveillance, lies, and danger they must flee. Claire Denis's sultry, paranoid romance.