Mestizo Cinema

In 2000, following a century of American occupation, Panama regained control of the Canal Zone territory. A Panamanian soldier enters the old military bases for the first time. While assigned to clean an artificial lake, he stumbles upon a mysterious woman in the jungle. She is revealed to be the former leader of the Culebra community’s resistance who had once fought against forced displacement. Their encounter sparks a journey of personal transformation, forcing the soldier to confront his own roots.

The piece, an experiment that begins on the skin, in the skins of a family that spoke in silence about a tropical dictatorship in the 1980s, the dictatorship of a house. The skins whispered silently and their voices were heard in the corners, on the walls, in the cooking pot, on the soupspoon, on the wet beans. As the soldiers marched in the streets, the echo of their footsteps resonated in the walls of the home of a military man’s family, a house where the words were forgotten. With few oral resources, some photographs and some stolen confessions, the director proposes an exploration that goes from the personal to the political through a fictionalized experience of the family story related to the dictatorship of Panama.

Many years ago, Cebaldo bade farewell to his family, who are members of Panama's indigenous population. Now, working in a Portuguese fishing port, he is overcome by nostalgia every evening and plays a melancholy song on the jukebox in a café.

A child is with his grandmother in a hospital. Since she can't go out to see the stars, he devises a fantastic plan to bring a starry sky to her cold hospital room.