Dispatch from the International Film Festival Panama

On the east of the Bay of Panama, skyscrapers—from condos to the yonic Trump tower—are being built at a ferocious rate, creating a vista that resembles that of Miami or Toronto. To the west is the Casco Viejo, recently named a UNESCO site, where the area’s French colonial heritage is being preserved (or beautified for tourists, depending on whom you talk to) and which in part recalls New Orleans, though it is steeped in a level of poverty first-world nations do not know. Facing each other from across the bay, the two areas are connected by freeways constantly humming with traffic. Navigating these two realities, IFFP positions itself as a way to declare the nation to the world.