Kelowna brothers Lucas and Travis Boychuk continue to make waves in Central America as their documentary makes the rounds in several film festivals.
Hotel Brothers follows Lucas and Travis as they started a surf resort from the ground up. The journey started in 2008 when they moved to Nicaragua.
12 years later, they now have three resorts, two in Nicaragua and another in Costa Rica.
The brothers started filming their process from the day they first landed in Nicaragua, but neither of them thought they’d ever put it together into a feature-length film.
But COVID-19 hit and to keep busy after tourists slowly stopped coming to their resorts, Lucas said he decided to put all the footage together, releasing the documentary in August 2020.
“After a month of searching through our storage rooms… I found our old memory cards and hard drives. I got addicted to it, started piecing out the video onto a timeline and looking for a way to tell our story in hopes to inspire others,” Lucas said.
“At the same time, I didn’t want all the videos we filmed over the years to disappear.”
Lucas spent the next four to five months editing the video, pulling 18-hour days, which he said wouldn’t have been possible if it wasn’t for the pandemic.
And now, their documentary is gaining more and more traction.
“We submitted our documentary for fun to the Canadian Cinematography Awards in July right when we finished it,” Lucas said.
“We were shocked when it won first place for best documentary cinematography.”
He said it felt so encouraging that they decided to submit it to more festivals. Lucas said the Montreal Independent Film Festival contacted them a few days ago, telling them that Hotel Brothers is one of their finalists. He said they don’t know the results yet but while they wait, the brothers found out their film will be featured in the Tokyo International Film Festival and the Toronto Film Magazine Festival.
“We had no intentions of winning any festivals, we just wanted to piece together our story and hope it inspires others,” Lucas said.
“But we’re excited to see where it goes.”
Hotel Brothers is available on YouTube and Amazon Prime. To learn more about Surf Ranch Resort, visit their Twitter, Instagram, and website.
READ: Documentary on Kelowna brothers’ Central American surf resort business hits Amazon
