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Karim Aïnouz's Playa del Futuro“Films are interesting when they’re specific.” So said Brazilian filmmaker Karim Aïnouz when asked why he explores identity—queer, national, gender, ethnic—in his films like Madame Satã and his most recent work, the sensuous Playa del Futuro. With his features being the focus of the International Film Festival Panama’s retrospective during its fourth edition, Aïnouz’s comment can also be extended to the fest’s (still evolving) mandate: an emphasis on—and bolstering of—the geographically specific cinemas in Central America. This idea of films defined by borders has increasingly gone out of vogue, as the nation state as it was defined in the 19th and 20th century has all but dissipated with increasing international co-financing and multi-national organizations not recognizing borders (let alone international labor laws). But as Aïnouz notes, this only makes festivals like Iffp more important: “It’s...