Abner Benaim Snags IFF Panama Audience Award With ‘Tropical Paradise’

Panama’s Abner Benaim, who has represented Panama three times at the Oscars, led by the shortlisted “Plaza Catedral,” has snagged IFF Panama’s all-important Audience Award with his documentary, Tropical Paradise” (“Paraiso tropical”).

The festival, which wrapped on April 12, also bestowed cash prizes on participants in its industry section, with Costa Rica’s Sofia Quiros taking home the coveted post-production award for her family drama ‘Silent Birds” in the all-female Su Mirada (Her Gaze) strand. Dominican Jeissy Trompiz snagged the Primera Mirada (First Look) prize for her documentary, ‘The Language of Water.’

Observational doc “Paper Tower,” from Guatemala’s Laura Garcia Cordon of Guatemala, 14 other contenders in Su Mirada’s development section.

“Tropical Paradise” is Benaim’s most personal film to date as it follows him on his quest to find out who and what really caused a 1994 plane crash that killed his beloved uncle and was later deemed to be a terrorist attack.

It “deals with such topics as trauma and healing, which are usually deemed difficult – so it was very good to see the deep and meaningful reactions from the audience,” Benaim told Variety. “There was an immediate connection; it felt like people engaged with the film and made it their own. This award seals an unforgettable moment and helps kickstart our upcoming theatrical release in Panama.”

At the festival’s opening night, IFF Panama foundation board president Pituka Ortega-Heilborn alluded to the current climate of uncertainty in the world, saying: “Cinema is life – now more than ever. In these days, may we laugh, cry and feel deeply through the journey of film.”

“We invite you to see one another with greater empathy, as Panama becomes, for a few days, a vibrant meeting point for cinema – from the region and in dialogue with the world,” concurred festival executive director Karla Quintero.

Indigenous Rights

Opening night film “Runa Simi” by Peru’s Augusto Zegarra, set the tone of the festival, with its powerful call to make the invisible visible. Stunned by the thunderous applause and cheers from the audience, Fernando Valencia, the documentary’s hero, and his son Dylan, spoke about their quest to dub “The Lion King” into Quechua, the most spoken Indigenous language in the world, with some 10 million speakers across parts of South America. “I’m a simple person who had a dream,” he said, thanking friends and family who helped him along the way.

A panel held the day before featuring Guatemala’s Jayro Bustamante, who has championed Indigenous rights across many of his films, Zegarra and “This Island” filmmakers Lorraine Jones and Cristian Carretero discussed the theme and, in the case of “This Island,” the rights of the marginalized poor. “The island on Puerto Rico’s west coast where we live is rarely seen on screen. Stories of displacement – and of socially marginalized communities – are often overlooked, especially in film. We wanted to change that: to bring visibility, work closely with these communities and portray the dignity within their daily struggle,” said Carretero.

Peru’s indigenous population has always been marginalized and while Zegarra’s docu, which took nine years to make, focuses on the Indigenous people’s rights to access films in their own language, “They also have had to fight for their rights to water, education and electricity in their communities,” he pointed out.

Professing his pride at having Maya Kaqchikel blood coursing through his veins, Bustamante asserted that one of the worse insults you can accuse someone in Guatemala is calling him or her an ‘Indian.’ In his latest drama, “Mountains of Fire,” two volcanologists warn Indigenous communities of a new volcano and uncover government neglect and corruption.

“We often hear the phrase ‘in danger of extinction’ associated with plants or animals, but languages are also in danger of extinction, as half of the approximately seven thousand languages that exist are at risk of disappearing,” said Trompiz and Gregorio Rodríguez, helmer and producer of Primera Mirada prizewinner, “The Language of Water.”

Among the 40 films in competition for the Audience Award, at least six of them dealt with Indigenous themes, including Bustamante’s “Mountains of Fire,” “In Search of the Rabbit Indian” by Panama’s Annie Canavaggio and María Neyla Santamaría and docu-fiction hybrid “The Journey of the Kokorrdit” by Elio B. Cunampio and Guido Bilbao about a man and his sixteen-year-old niece and their search for the elusive kokorrdit bird.

“This is the second consecutive year that we have invited emerging Indigenous filmmakers through the program Voices of the Territories, run by Wagua Films,” noted IFF Panama Industry coordinator, Cat Caballero.  

María Neyla Santamaría, who also executive produced “The Journey of the Kokorrdit,” said: As a producer and filmmaker, I am interested in these kinds of stories. In times of crisis, these are the projects we should be telling.”

“In Search of the Rabbit Indian” represents that subtle line between reality and the mystical; it’s also an invitation to recognize the connection between environmental needs, the human rights of the Naso people and the progressive loss of the culture of the last 4,000 Naso,” said Canavaggio.

Manuel Abramovich on Lucrecia Martel Directing “Zama” in his Docu-Portrait “Light Years” 

Meanwhile, Argentine filmmaker Manuel Abramovich (“Pornomelancholia”), known for his introspective “docu-cinema,” discussed his past works and regaled his Masterclass audience with anecdotes about his experience in filming “Light Years,” (“Años Luz”), a behind-the-scenes documentary about Lucrecia Martel shooting her period drama, “Zama.” He related how he had hidden microphones throughout the set and used a zoom lens in order to be as unobtrusive as possible.

“We had access to all the raw “Zama” footage thanks to the production’s trust, which allowed us to closely observe directing as a process: the marks, instructions, repetitions, mistakes and actor blocking,” he said, adding that he was mainly interested in “showing directing not as inspiration or revelation, but as work—repetition, observation, collaboration and constant searching until an idea takes shape.”

“I like this portrait of Lucrecia as obsessively committed to her craft. In the rushes, we saw her repeatedly discovering the hidden microphones and joking, ‘Manuel, we found you again, turn off the device,’ which moved me because it revealed a complicity between us even while she was directing large, complex scenes. Later, when I finished editing, I showed her the film, and she wanted to change a scene from a sound break where I filmed her in close-up waiting in silence; she felt embarrassed, but we eventually kept it because it showed her playful, mischievous side, like she was almost playing at cinema.”

Former HBO, The Mediapro Studio Exec Leslie Cohen on Selling a Film

In a conversation with Ortega-Heilbron, Leslie Cohen drew on her vast experience working for the likes of HBO for years to provide insights on how acquisition executives evaluate possible pickups for their companies.

Evaluation starts with a personal connection – “do I connect with the story?”—but is always shaped by commissioning needs, she noted. At HBO Latino, this meant balancing a slate across genres and regions in Latin America and Spain, so taste is layered with strategic considerations.

The key questions are: “Why should we care?,” “why now?” and whether the project has “heart”— strong characters and emotional resonance, she added.

She also stressed presentation: in a crowded marketplace, projects must answer these questions clearly and be packaged in a concise, professional way. As she noted, “we have all become our own marketers,” which has raised standards but also increased pressure on creators to both develop and effectively present their work.

The 14th IFF Panama took place over April 9-12.