Tito, Margot and Me

Mercedes Arias, along with Delfina Vidal, is the founder of Betesda Films and works as a director and producer of independent documentaries. She has won two grants from the Panamanian Film Authority to carry out these projects transforming the content into award-winning programming. Case in point: Box 25, a documentary about the construction of the Panama Canal, is told through first-person accounts from the very men who excavated the Canal in the early 20th century. This film piqued the curiosity of a new generation of Panamanians who had grown up with a historical vacuum of knowledge about issues such as dictatorship and racial discrimination, which were never part of Panama’s educational curricula.

Delfina Vidal, is a director and screenwriter with more than 20 years of experience in film and television production. She has directed and produced with her partner Mercedes Arias the documentaries Case in point: Box 25, A Different Day, and Out, la salida está en tu mente and the most recent Tito, Margot and Me, winner of the Ibermedia Fund 2019 and the Panama Film Fund. She has specialized in documentary filmmaking and was a student of Patricio Guzmán, Marta Andreu, and Marta Hincapié. As a university professor, she has taught at the University of Panama, Santa Maria La Antigua University, and the University of the Isthmus. She has participated as a jury member in the HAYAH Festival, the ICARO Festival, and at academic school and university competitions.