[Many thanks to Peter Jordens for bringing this item to our attention.] The full title of this article is “12th IFF Panama captures the excitement of Central American and Caribbean film industry advances.” Anna Marie de la Fuente (Variety) writes about filmmakers from Costa Rica, Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, and Panama, among the many entries from Central America and the Caribbean screened at the 12th Panama International Film Festival (IFF Panama), which ran from April 4-7, 2024. Shown above is a still from Sugar Island, directed by Dominican director Johanné Gómez Terrero.

[. . .] True to its mandate to serve as a showcase for Central American and Caribbean cinema, the festival’s program this year includes a bevy of acclaimed films from the region, including two Panamanian Indigenous-themed features, “Bila Burba” and “God is a Woman.”

Recent years has seen the growing international recognition of pics from the region, with Nelson Carlo de los Santos becoming the first Dominican – and first Latin American – filmmaker to snag the best director Silver Bear at the Berlinale for his drama, “Pepe.”

Costa Rican director Antonella Sudasassi Furniss’ sophomore feature, “Memories of a Burning Body,” clinched the Audience Award for best fiction film in the Panorama section of the A-list German festival.

Both are screening at IFF Panama. Announced last December, “Pepe” is one of three winners of the festival’s Primera Mirada (First Look) industry section for pics in post, alongside Guatemalan filmmaker Jayro Bustamante’s “Cordillera de Fuego” and Dominican Johanné Gómez Terrero’s “Sugar Island.”

Winners of the Su Mirada section, in development and in post, will be unveiled at the closing ceremony on April 7, as will the audience award winner, chosen from 18 contenders. “We have been real-time witnesses to the growing success of filmmaking in Central America and the Caribbean, and we are honored to have been supporting it all these years,” says IFF Panama board president Pituka Ortega-Heilbron, who has ceded festival director duties to Karla Quintero to focus on her own film projects.

Indeed, more women filmmakers are emerging from Panama, most recently led by Ana Endara and Ana Elena Tejera. Arianne Benedetti is premiering her second film, “Despierta Mamá” in May.

Endara’s fiction feature debut in post, “Querido Tropico,” just won the Arthouse Cinema Award which comprises a presentation deal at the Cinélatino Toulouse’s Cinéma en Construction section, the first Panamanian to win such an honor.

It stars Chile’s Paulina Garcia (“Gloria”) as an upper-class woman with encroaching dementia who is cared for by a pregnant immigrant with problems of her own, played by Jenny Navarrete (“The Other Son”). “The film succeeds in bringing to life and making vibrant that space between two solitudes, that moment when the daily routine shared and the care for each other create an intimate and indestructible bond,” said the jury.

Tejera’s award-winning documentary “Panquiaco” was heralded among the first notable Indigenous-themed films made by a Panamanian filmmaker when it made a splash at Rotterdam IFF in 2020. It was produced by Maria Isabel Burnes who’s also produced Mariel García Spooner’s “Algo Azul” and directed her own feature, “Tumbadores.” [. . .]

For full article, see https://variety.com/2024/film/global/iff-panama-central-america-caribbean-1235958468

[Shown above: Still from Dominican Johanné Gómez Terrero’s “Sugar Island.”]