Three Panamanian fiction features have each won $500,000 in national production funding, leading a selection that also supports documentaries, debut films, animation and television-series development.
The Ministry of Culture published the winners of the Fondo Cine 2025 and national short-film competitions on October 30, following their announcement earlier that week.
The largest individual awards went to Cuerpo cerrado, by María Isabel Burnes; Días patrios, by Arturo Montenegro; and De la frontera hacia el interior, by Mariel García Spooner.
Mónica Gronchi’s Hasta que lleguemos received the $300,000 first-feature award.
Documentary winners include Congo, by Miriam Pons; Ana Pascal, by Eldrid Sandoval; and Astronauta, una película no binaria, by Enmanuel Martínez Corro. Each received a $100,000 production award.
The programme also reaches projects at earlier and later stages of development. Series-development funding supports proposals before production, while separate awards help films already in postproduction.
DICINE’s published competition framework provides three series-development awards of $20,000 each and two postproduction awards of $25,000 each.
Among the selected postproduction projects are Sabores de resistencia Guna – Tribal Roots, by Lionel Yosue Ángel, and Te puedo escuchar, by Alberto Serra.
Short-film awards cover fiction, documentary and animation. Hernán Jafeth Sánchez’s animated project Moi y el mar received $10,000.
Metro Libre reported that international juries assessed 74 eligible Fondo Cine submissions and 12 short-film proposals.
Although the competitions retain “2025” in their names, the results were announced in October 2026. The awards support projects at different stages and do not mean the films are ready for cinemas. The ministry’s announcement provides no release schedule.
Sources: MiCultura
