Panama’s Abner Benaim has boarded as a co-director of the fiction series “School of the Americas” (“Escuela de las Américas”), which will star two of Chile’s most internationally renowned thespians: Daniela Vega, who headed the Oscar-winning “A Fantastic Woman,) and Alfredo Castro, a Pablo Larrain regular who’s also starred in a slew of Latin American projects.
The project has been selected for the Co-Production and Financing Forum at Madrid-based confab Iberseries & Platino Industria which takes place Sept. 29-Oct. 2.
Benaim was an obvious addition to the project given its subject matter and setting. “School of the Americas” begins with an exhumation at the site of the 1983 El Jazmín massacre, which yields a graduation photograph of four commandos with their faces scratched out and a pendant stamped Fort Gulick, the U.S. military base in the Panama Canal Zone, site of the infamous U.S. Army School of the Americas.
Panamanian-American human rights investigator Inés Vega recognizes the massacre’s signature: counterinsurgency doctrine taught at the School. When someone tries to kill her, the cold case turns personal. Tracking four graduates across three continents, she uncovers what the School really taught – and who is still protecting its legacy.
Benaim joins co-director Oscar Godoy who also has close ties to Larraín, having been first AD on Larraín’s “The Count,” “The Club,” “Neruda,” “No” and “Tony Manero.” Godoy was recently second unit director on Fabula’s “Someone Has to Know,” which ranked among Netflix’s global top ten for non-English-language series.
His feature “Ulysses” screened at a string of festivals, starting with the San Sebastián Film Fest and culminating at Chile’s Santiago Film Fest (Sanfic) where it won Best Chilean Film.
Benaim, Panama’s most internationally renowned filmmaker, has represented his country three times at the Oscars, starting with his documentary “Invasion,” about the U.S. 1989 invasion of Panama, followed by “Yo No Me Llamo Rubén Blades” and “Plaza Catedral,” the latter making the Academy shortlist and earning Benaim a Premios Platino nomination for screenplay. His debut feature “Chance” remains the highest-grossing Panamanian film ever released.
Its producers Seedling Media Productions (Panama) and La Panda Productions (U.S./Spain) are targeting 2028 for principal photography to begin, provided all the financing is in place.
“The School of the Americas was a real school, located in the Panama Canal Zone; for half a century, it taught officers from across Latin America. We are not making a series about monsters — monsters are an alibi. We are making one about a curriculum: the fact that this was written down, graded and taught, and the men who graduated went home and became somebody’s father. Violence isn’t born. It’s taught,” said La Panda’s Guillermo Escalona, co-creator and executive producer alongside Brittany DeVries of Seedling Media.
Escalona, a Spanish-American screenwriter-producer based in Los Angeles, co-founder of La Panda Productions, is the co-creator and co-writer, along with Rhayuela’s Federico Durán, of the late Colombian filmmaker Jaime Osorio Márquez’s posthumous feature “The Awakening.” The supernatural action thriller was completed by Durán and José Luis Rugeles (“Alias Maria” “Rebellion”) after the director’s death following which it world-premiered at the Guadalajara International Film Festival in April, with Latido Films handling sales.
Based in Panama, Seedling Media Productions, founded in 2013 by DeVries, has a varied list of credits that include fiction and documentary features. Among them are crime thriller “Chacalería,” “I Really Love My Husband,” shot in Panama and premiered at SXSW in 2025 and documentaries “Dear Panamá,” “A World Without Orphans” and “Lost Kites,” winner of the Best Documentary Feature at the London Independent Film Awards.
Currently, Seedling is producing “Against No One” (“Denuncia Contra Nadie”), a co-production with Guatemala supported by the Ibermedia Co-Production Fund.