Panquiaco

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. So begins this intimate, philosophical reflection on personal and cultural homesickness, memory and identity. Poetic texts mix with strongly cinematic images to set the tone, which was partly inspired by director Ana Elena Tejera’s research into pre-colonial stories and myths.

We are brought along on a journey of an indigenous story of creation through a funerary ritual to the celebration of a political uprising. Cebaldo returns to Panama, where tradition lives on, but his youth is gone. There is a passing reference to Panquiaco, the man who showed Spanish conqueror Balboa the way to the Pacific. Unburdened by genre, Tejera – who refers to her first film's style as simply "cinema" – bleeds narrative and documentary forms into reverie.