When I was nine, like many Panamanians, I entered the
Old Canal Zone for the first time, where U.S. military
bases stood. That moment remained etched in me.
How does one inhabit a land from which we were
displaced for more than a century? How do we carry the
legacy of 14 bases and mined fields we never asked for?
This is Panama’s conflict, and Ernesto’s: being mestizo,
caught between an identity that vanished and another
that is not ours.
The film unfolds in 2000, after a century of U.S.
occupation, when Panama regained the Canal Zone. We
witness this return through Ernesto’s eyes, moving across
shadowed spaces where violence and tenderness coexist,
exploring how bodies remember what nations forget.
Though the Zone was returned 25 years ago, current
U.S. intentions to reclaim it make this story urgent.
Corte Culebra portrays a wounded land politically and
intimately, seeking a cinematic form to express a country
shaped by constant occupation, where reconciliation
requires facing its scars.