IFF Panama Wraps, Panama Doc ‘Nación de Titanes’ Wins Viewers Award

A truncated Panama Int’l Movie Pageant (IFF Panama) wrapped Dec. 4 on a excessive notice, with the debut doc-feature “Nación de Titanes” by Panamanian Joaquín Horna Sosa snagging the Viewers Award, a superb indication of its field workplace potential.

Certainly one of solely 4 Panamanian options in competitors, “Nación de Titanes” follows six wrestlers throughout Panama’s golden age of wrestling throughout the ‘60s by the ‘80s. Doc-feature stars wrestlers Sandokan, Ricardo Díaz, El Greco, El Titán, Cronox II and Johnny González because it chronicles the ups and downs of their respective careers and digs into the origins of the game.

The three-day pageant had encouraging information from Tradition Minister Giselle Gonzalez and Panama Metropolis Deputy Mayor Judy Meana who each pledged their continued help for the pageant.

Pituka Ortega Heilbron, chair of the pageant board and basis, famous that the pageant was working at a fraction of its regular dimension and that the final three editions had been essentially the most tough. Sadly, IFF Panama’s scenario is region-wide. Movie festivals that relied on public help have seen their budgets shrink dramatically as governments have diverted funds to shoring up their nations’ economies, impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and the Ukraine conflict.

New pageant director Bernardo Ordás Guardia, who took over from Ortega Heilbron, vowed to make IFF Panama an epicenter of artwork and tradition. “Our mission is to drive Central America’s movie business,” he stated, inviting the pageant’s employees and almost 100 volunteers to the stage to acknowledge their invaluable contribution to the fest.

Different filmmakers attending the pageant with their respective movies included Laura Mora, director of “The Kings of the World,” winner of the 2022 San Sebastian Golden Shell and Colombia’s Oscar submission; Pavel Giroud, director of docu “The Padilla Affair”; Santiago Mitre and his Argentine field workplace hit “Argentina 1985,” his nation’s entry to the Oscars race; and Costa Rica’s Ariel Escalante who offered his IFF Panama Primera Mirada winner “Domingo and the Mist” and the final business panel of the fest, “Movie as a Punk Train.”

Trade panel “Is There an Viewers for Latin American Cinema?” weighed the outcomes of the viewers research drawn from three sources: IFF Panama, Copa Airways’ IFF Panama channel and free on-line platform, Cinema Sanitas.

Offered by Argentine market guide María Elena Provensal and that includes native producers María Isabel Burnes (“Panquiaco”) and Isabella Galvez (“Para su tranquilidad, haga su propio museo”) as panelists, the reply to the query was a convincing sure. Principal pageant sponsor Copa Airways, which has supplied, since 2018, a devoted channel of curated Latin American movies on its flights, famous in its findings that airline audiences had a powerful desire for dramas, significantly from Argentina, Dominican Republic, Panama, Chile and Brazil. “A hanging result’s that for the set of data obtainable, there doesn’t appear to be a related correlation between the choice to eat this content material and the movie’s worldwide field workplace efficiency. That is excellent news given the sparse advertising and marketing budgets of Latin American movies,” the examine concluded.  

In flip, Cinema Sánitas and IFF Panama reported that audiences had been eager to view unique, genuine cinema with regional themes. Three of the 4 most considered movies previously two years had been Panamanian, amongst them docu “Panquiaco,” six-country Central American co-production “Dias de luz” and Abner Benaim’s “Plaza Catedral.”

IFF Panama ran Dec. 2- 4.