‘This Film Is Urgent,’ Says the Panamanian Director of ‘Culebra Cut’ as the U.S. Military Conducts Exercises on Bases It Left Decades Ago (EXCLUSIVE)

Panama’s Ana Elena Tejera whose poetic debut feature “Panquiaco” opened IFF Panama in 2020, is in production on her new fiction film, “Culebra Cut “(“Corte Culebra”). It features Daniel Giménez Cacho (“Bardo” by Alejandro G. Iñárritu, “Zama “by Lucrecia Martel) playing alongside non-pro actor D’Angelo Simmons who in his everyday life is a firefighter in the province of Colón and was discovered after a year of intensive casting.

Set in the year 2000, in the aftermath of the Canal Zone’s return to Panama, “Culebra Cut” revisits this pivotal moment through an intimate yet political lens, examining the lingering wound of a land molded by nearly 100 years of occupation.

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It follows a band of Panamanian soldiers entering the once restricted Canal Zone for the first time. Among them is Ernesto (Simmons), a young Panamanian soldier who is ordered to clean up the area around an old military school located next to an artificial lake that flooded and displaced entire communities for the construction of the Canal.

“Ernesto begins to sense that strange things have happened in this place. He ventures deeper into the territory, and in the middle of the jungle, he encounters a mysterious woman, the leader of the Culebra community – a group that resisted displacement by taking refuge in old bunkers and mined territories. This encounter forces him to confront both his own wound and the wound of the land,” the synopsis goes.

“When I was nine years old, like many Panamanians, I crossed into the former Canal Zone for the first time. For nearly a century, that territory had been occupied by the United States to build and defend the Panama Canal. It was a space filled with checkpoints, fences and soldiers – a territory that quite literally split the country in two,” Tejera related.

“That experience stayed in my body in a visceral way. Ever since, I’ve carried these questions with me: How do you reinhabit a land from which we were displaced for a century? How did we – those children – end up carrying the legacy of fourteen military bases and minefields we never chose?”

Tejera relates that the same site has been re-occupied by the U.S. as a training center, some 25 years later. Meanwhile, a U.S. aircraft carrier is crossing the region through Panama (the last time this happened was during World War II), while Venezuelan oil is once again transiting the Canal, according to her.

“That historical continuity – that occupation which never fully left – is precisely the heart of ‘Culebra Cut.’ The film’s conflict is Ernesto’s conflict: being mestizo, growing up between an identity that no longer exists and another that has never been ours to claim. To inhabit a territory where the sense of belonging is broken. That is why making this film now is urgent,” she said.

Last year, President Trump expressed an interest in taking back the Panama Canal from the country, claiming that the route was being controlled by China.

Since then, the U.S. and Panama have formed an “expanded partnership,” upping the number of joint training exercises and allowing the U.S. to stage them in Panamanian-controlled sites, including the Aeronaval Base Cristóbal Colón, Rodman Naval Station and Howard Air Force Base. 

“They never really left; Since April 2025, they have been stronger than ever,” said Tejera who held an exhibition at the Canal Museum on this issue titled “1.432 km² of Humiliation: Gestures Against the Evil Eye” at the Panama Canal Museum. Held from May 2025 to March this year, the exhibition will be taken to Taiwan next.

Her latest feature has attracted a slew of international players as co-producers. “Culebra Cut” is a co-production between Mestizo Cinema (Panama), Fulgurance (France), Tarantula (Belgium), Intra Movies (Italy) and GROM (The Netherlands).

The film is also backed by Arte France as well as major funds including Panama’s Fondo Cine, France’s CNC National Film Board, the World Cinema Fund, the Fonds Audiovisuel de la Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles and the Hubert Bals Fund, among others.

The project was developed at prominent international platforms, led by the Locarno Film Festival residency and markets in Venice and Rotterdam.

The 14^th IFF Panama runs over April 9 – 12.