Tomás Cortés
Producer · Director · Director of Photography
Panamanian filmmaker with more than twenty years in the trade, trained at Universidad del Cine (Buenos Aires), the DFFB Next Wave programme (Berlin) and in preservation at ENCRyM (Mexico).
He was production manager on Stars at Noon (Grand Prix, Cannes 2022) and a Panamanian producer of Mariposas Negras, the animated feature that won the Goya, Platino and Quirino awards. Marked by analogue formats and by the preservation of archives and legacies, he is currently producing and co-directing Toro Volandero, Panama's first animated feature.
SELECTED FILMOGRAPHY
The Sorcerer: Julio ZachrissonDriven by a lifelong fascination with a painting in his grandmother's living room, a filmmaker sets off for Madrid in search of the enigmatic painter, Julio Zachrisson.Producer, cinematographer, co-writer & editor
SalomaA feature documentary about an intimate search: finding the photograph of a peasant grandmother. In the mountains of Azuero, through a personal journey, the story opens up to other voices, other faces and other stories, until it becomes a choral portrait of rural Panama.Director of photography
Flying BullAn animated adventure based on Julio Zachrisson's graphic universe, and Panama's first animated feature.Co-director, producer & editor · in production
The Tower and I: The History of The Canopy TowerA documentary short on Raúl Arias de Para, who turned an instrument of war into a paradise for birdwatchers. What was once a United States Air Force watchtower in Panama is today an icon of ecotourism.Director, cinematographer, writer & editor
Santa Familia · A Tale of Two BarriosTwenty years of work inside Panama's Casco Antiguo, told by the people who did it: sixty apartments raised on the shell of a ruined school, against a three hundred year old city wall.Director & cinematographer
Mariposas NegrasA 2D animated feature from Spain on how climate change reaches the lives of three women from very different parts of the planet with one thing in common: all three lose everything and are forced to migrate to survive. Official Selection at Annecy, IDFA and Sitges.Producer (Panama)
Stars at NoonThe film adaptation of the Denis Johnson novel of the same name, directed by Claire Denis. An American journalist is trapped in a post-pandemic military dictatorship.Production manager
Mama's HouseThrough photographs and unseen family archive, the film reconstructs the house of Yaya, José Braithwaite's grandmother, in Río Abajo, while it is being torn down.Director & editor
With You, From AfarSeparated from her family by the crisis in Venezuela, a young immigrant in Panama writes about her grandfather without imagining that, in losing him, she will discover how much of him still lives in her.Producer, cinematographer & editor
La Cucarachita MandiAn animated short in cardboard and 2D puppets about a poor cockroach who finds a gold coin and has to decide what to do with her new fortune. A modern cardboard adaptation of the traditional Caribbean oral tale La Cucarachita Mandinga.Producer, co-writer & editor
CabangaA 2016 music video for Patricia Vlieg's album «Cabanga», shot entirely on 16mm: a family posing in the countryside, held in one take, with the frame of the film itself left in the image.Director of «Portraits of Her Joy»
Tropical Services · 50 yearsThe fiftieth anniversary film of Tropical Services, the Panamanian corporate cleaning and disinfection company founded in 1971.Producer & cinematography
Biomuseo: Panama is the MuseumA series of sixty micro-documentaries for the permanent interactive exhibition at the Biomuseo, Panama's iconic Museum of Biodiversity.Director, producer & cinematographerEDUCATION
Five years at the Universidad del Cine, the Buenos Aires school founded in 1991 by director Manuel Antín. This is where the analogue eye that still marks his work comes from.
A programme at the Deutsche Film- und Fernsehakademie Berlin devoted to the other side of a film: how it is sold, how it is shown and how it travels through the international markets.
A specialisation at the Escuela Nacional de Conservación, Restauración y Museografía «Manuel del Castillo Negrete», part of Mexico's INAH. It is the technical ground under the archive work of the house: the Zachrisson legacy and every collection that passes through here.