Istmo

The history of Panama you were never told.

Twelve dramatic episodes from the history of Panama. One short film each. Almost all of them are true and almost none have been told.The pilot is already shot. Eight minutes, and the whole series makes sense.

Watch the pilot

12 episodes480 years1519 — 1999

The series · twelve short films

Sword eaten by salt — poster for Balboa's Head

Istmo

EP01

Balboa's Head

1519

Four years after seeing the Pacific, his own father-in-law has him beheaded for treason. The head stays on a pike in Acla.

Bell, cracked and burnt — poster for Morgan

Istmo

EP02

Morgan

1671

He crosses the isthmus eating boiled leather and takes the richest city on the Pacific. In the end it burns to the ground, and who set the fire is still disputed.

Wig soaked in mud — poster for The Scottish Darién

Istmo

EP03

The Scottish Darién

1700

Scotland sinks a quarter of its national capital into the Darién jungle. They arrive with wigs and bibles to trade. Two thousand die. Seven years later the country ceases to exist.

Railroad tie with spike — poster for Matachín

Pilot

Istmo

EP04

Matachín

1855

The world's first interoceanic railroad is built on Chinese coolies and fever. Legend says one death per tie. The legend exaggerates; the real figure is no comfort either.

A slice left unpaid — poster for The Watermelon Slice

Istmo

EP05

The Watermelon Slice

1856

An American on his way to the California gold rush doesn't pay for a slice of watermelon. Fifteen dead, and the first pretext for United States military intervention on the isthmus.

Mildewed French share certificate — poster for The Lesseps Collapse

Istmo

EP06

The Lesseps Collapse

1889

The hero of Suez crashes into the jungle: twenty-two thousand dead and the greatest financial scandal in France. Eiffel convicted, a baron dead the night before testifying, the old man senile and never understanding he lost.

Tailor's shears in the cut — poster for The Separation

Istmo

EP07

The Separation

1903

An American gunboat, a bought general and a train that never moved. The only shell killed a Chinese man and a donkey. Twelve days later a Frenchman signed the canal treaty, without a single Panamanian in the room.

Bed leg in a bowl of water — poster for Gorgas

Istmo

EP08

Gorgas

1904

He arrives knowing the enemy is a mosquito and nobody believes him: they insist the fever comes from filth. He fights bureaucrats for over a year while people die. The French had stood the bed legs in water to keep ants off — the hospital was breeding what killed its patients.

Two payroll tokens — poster for Gold and Silver

Istmo

EP09

Gold and Silver

1904

The Zone had two payrolls: white Americans were paid in gold, West Indians and Panamanians in silver. Separate fountains, separate commissaries, separate housing. Legal apartheid on Panamanian soil, sustained for seventy-five years.

Bundle of unlit charges — poster for The Culebra Cut

Istmo

EP10

The Culebra Cut

1913

The mountain collapses onto itself again and again and swallows whatever is dug out of it. Five thousand six hundred official dead, most of them West Indian.

Istmo

EP11

The Martyrs

1964

Students enter the Zone to raise their flag, as agreed. The flag tears in the struggle. Three days of gunfire, more than twenty dead, and the country breaks with Washington.

Flag folded into a triangle — poster for The Reversion

Istmo

EP12

The Reversion

1999

December 31st, 1999, noon. The flag of the United States comes down and the canal is Panamanian. It is the only episode in the series that is not a tragedy, and that changes the meaning of the thirty before it: the grinder, in the end, lost.

Tell me when it premieres.

Could your organization make this series possible?

Istmo is financed through corporate sponsorship: a single presenting sponsor, category exclusivity, and individual episodes with sector affinity. The next step is not a proposal by email — it is a private screening: we project the pilot on a big screen and present the full series plan. The conversation is confidential.

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