Panama is not only a country in Central America. It also represents a state of mind, an approach to cinema, according to Austrian producers Lixi Frank and David Bohun. After all, for many of us, Panama is a faraway place that we know of but have never been to. And that represents exactly the mindset the duo wanted to bring to the table when they founded Vienna-based Panama Film in 2018.

“Panama Film stands for films that give expression and space to challenging questions, lingering observations and lost longings,” its website highlights. And the founders tell THR that they focus on collaborating with filmmakers who approach cinema in unconventional ways and unique styles.

Panama has had a slew of festival hits in recent years. Movements of a Nearby Mountain by Sebastian Brameshuber won the Grand Prix at Cinéma du Réel 2019 in Paris. Sandra Wollner’s sophomore feature, The Trouble With Being Born, won the special jury award in the 2020 Berlin Film Festival Encounters competition before going on to win four Austrian Film Awards, including for the best feature film.

In 2023, documentary Stams by Bernhard Braunstein debuted in Berlin’s Panorama program, while Panama’s first three-way co-production, Timm Kröger’s The Universal Theory, premiered in the Venice Film Festival competition. The 2024 film Bluish, by directors Lilith Kraxner and Milena Czernovsky, won the Grand Prix at FID Marseille.

Since then, Panama has been on a particularly successful run. In 2025, White Snail, directed by Elsa Kremser and Levin Peter, was honored with the special jury prize and a best performance award at the Locarno Film Festival. Earlier this year, Brameshuber’s London premiered in Berlin’s Panorama program and went on to win the Grand Prix at Cinéma du Réel.

Now, Panama is hitting the Croisette with not one, but two Cannes titles. It’s the producer on Wollner’s new project, Everytime, which world premieres in the Un Certain Regard section on May 18, and a co-producer on Valeska Grisebach’s competition title The Dreamed Adventure, which premieres on May 22. In addition, Frank is one of the 20 producers featured by European Film Promotion (EFP) in its annual Producers on the Move showcase of rising talent.

Ahead of a busy Cannes, Frank and Bohun talked to THR about the safe creative space that they look to enable with Panama, why they focus more on auteurs and their vision than anything else, and why Panama loves to back experimental voices that may make audiences go “WTF?!”

How did you two meet, and did you work together before founding Panama Film?

Frank We both studied at the Filmakademie Wien (Film Academy Vienna), but were in different years. So we knew of each other, but never worked together. I then produced a documentary with Kurdwin Ayub called Paradise! Paradise!, of which David was a fan. And David did a documentary with his brothers called Are You Sleeping, Brother Jakob?, and I was a big fan of that film. So, we knew that we appreciated each other’s work. When David was planning to found a company and was looking for a second producer, he asked me.

Bohun It was a little bit like a blind date. We knew of each other, and also our work, and I had also heard very good things about Lixi as a producer and as a human being. Her name kept popping up. And when we met, it was really business love at first sight.

Frank It felt right. After our first talks about what kind of films we want to produce and how we want to work, I just had a really good gut feeling. And we said, “Okay, let’s try it. What can go wrong?” You can always split again if things don’t work out.

Why did you choose the name Panama for your company, and what does the name signal about the films you look for?

Bohun It was a long journey, we really wanted to have some simplicity. The idea of a faraway place came up, which everybody has heard about but not been to yet.

Bohun When you are going to the theater to watch a film, you go on a journey, and you come back out of the same door, but you’re somehow enriched, you’re somehow different. The journey can change something within you. And this is what we are looking for in films, something that is really thought-provoking and gives us input for our beliefs, our thoughts, our emotions.

Frank We are always looking for a real vision of the filmmakers. We love to produce films that have a unique view on the world through the eyes of the director, something that questions things, that challenges, that is courageous. 

Bohun Exactly! For us, it’s not about the story and the script per se, but the vision of the director and their approach and angle.

You have worked on documentaries and fiction features. Some of Panama’s films even seem to unfold in a space where documentary and fiction meet or blur. Do you have a preference, and how would you describe your approach to collaborating with filmmakers?

Frank We both come from a documentary background. So it was clear to us we’d do documentaries, but we also really wanted to move into fiction films. We wanted to make author-driven films, and sometimes these films mix [elements and genres]. Our approach from the very start was choosing projects wisely to have a very specific slate that allows people to see our kind of handwriting.

In working with directors, we are looking for a lot of trust on both sides. We try to give them creative freedom, but also enjoy being close to the process. For us, it is really about accompanying directors and trusting their vision.

With all you have shared, Sandra Wollner’s new film, Everytime, in the Un Certain Regard program feels like a perfect fit for Panama Film. It’s about a tragedy and how a family copes, or doesn’t cope, with it. And it made me go: “What the hell am I seeing!? I can’t stop watching!”

Bohun Sandra’s thoughts and approach are so unique. She calls it spinning around the core of what she actually wants to express and say through film. By asking questions and discussing her thoughts, she gets closer to what she really wants to show and tell us, and this raises questions that we never thought about before. 

Frank Sandra is such an exceptional director. We truly admire her way of approaching film and stories. Right after the shooting of The Trouble With Being Born, it was clear that we wanted to develop something new together. She came up with Everytime, and when we read the first treatment, including the ending with the sun [doing something unexpected that won’t be spoiled here], we were like: “What the fuck?! This is so crazily bold, we want to see this on screen!”

Bohun In 2026, it is so difficult to add anything that has not been seen before. There have been so many films about grief and people losing somebody. But then comes this thing that just exists in Sandra Wollner’s mind, and it’s just exciting for us and, we believe, also for the audience.

Is a minority production role something that Panama could do more of in the future? And how do you think about your geographical focus?

Bohun With Valeska’s film, we are very happy and proud to be able to be part of this renowned director’s new project. There are directors out there we admire, and we would love to be part of films from anywhere – Brazil, Spain, or wherever.

So, how cool is it to have two films at Cannes?

Bohun It is a very beautiful reward for us and all the work we have put into Panama Film. We have been really lucky to have had films at Berlin, where Sandra Wollner’s The Trouble With Being Born won an award in the Encounters competition, which put us on the map of the Austrian film industry. And together with our long-term production partner Viktoria Stolpe from The Barricades, we were at Venice in the competition. Last year, at Locarno, White Snail won two awards. So we have had the chance to consistently present our projects at those renowned festivals. And now, being part of this Cannes circle is really the next step for us.

What films is Panama Film working on right now?

Frank We are mainly working on a new film by Patric Chiha, an Austrian director based in Paris. Ice Cream is a story about two teenagers in Vienna, who are madly falling in love before Ava discovers that Florian is having sex with older men. It is about desire, intimacy and how difficult it is to find yourself. We are in the financing process, and it is set up as a co-production with France. We have been big fans of Patric’s since he did Brothers of the Night, and are very much looking forward to shooting his next film in Vienna.

We are also inner-Austrian co-producers of Simon Maria Kubiena’s The Flowering of a Chimera, a project that took part in La Résidence du Festival de Cannes last year.

Bohun We are also working on the third feature of Alexandra Makarová, which is called Fanny Is Alive. We saw her sophomore feature, Perla, last year and were very impressed by Alexandra’s way of thinking [about] film as an overall cinematographic composition, by how she manages to capture emotions nonverbally instead of putting them into dialogue. You can feel her inspiration by film history. Her next film is set in 1947, post-war Vienna. It’s about Fanny, who has survived three concentration camps and is now in a so-called Displaced Persons Camp. Those were transit centers for Holocaust survivors. She wants to migrate to Palestine to leave the past behind, but is finally found by her husband and hence forced to go back to her former home in Vienna. It is a film about this period of Europe that is treated little in films so far, and Alexandra’s approach hooked us immediately.

This project will be a big challenge for us, being a period film with a high budget. It is planned as a co-production with Germany and at least one more country.

Speaking of financing challenges. How are things looking these days for Austrian film from your perspective?

Bohun Well, from an outside perspective, this latest success at Berlinale with 11 Austrian films, and now being present in Cannes with three films, looks amazing. But these are the fruits of the past years, where we had this uncapped cash rebate scheme ÖFI+ that became an essential pillar for Austrian film production. Due to the Austrian state’s budget gap, this funding pot was shut down for theatrical productions, which means a significant reduction [in the number of films that can be] produced. On the distribution [side], we are having the most successful year since our foundation – but so far without funding for an upcoming feature film.

Frank And it is impacting the whole industry at the moment. So, that big success of Austrian films this year is overshadowed by that. Our hopes lie in the Investment Obligation that our government is trying to set up this year; the Austrian film industry really needs this to continue participating in (co-)productions like Everytime or The Dreamed Adventure.