A Panamanian-made religious documentary eight years in the making has arrived on the big screen. El Último Llamado de María, directed by Peru-born, naturalized Panamanian filmmaker Erik Cotrina, premiered simultaneously on October 1 in Panama, Honduras, Costa Rica, Guatemala and El Salvador. In Panama, the 100-minute film is being screened at Cinépolis locations.
What Happened
The documentary traces its origins to 2014, when Cotrina’s wife invited him on a pilgrimage to Medjugorje, a village in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Until then, Cotrina says he had no particular connection to religious themes. During the trip, he describes having lived a spiritual experience that reconnected him with his faith, and upon returning to Panama, the idea for a documentary about Medjugorje was born.
Turning the idea into a film took time. The project gained momentum when Cotrina met Father Francisco Ángel Verar Hernández, a priest who has traveled to Medjugorje every year since 1983 and who knew the alleged visionaries personally. After months of conversations, the priest agreed to join the production.
According to the film’s synopsis, the documentary follows a priest who gathers testimonies in different countries about the supernatural events that, according to the visionaries, have occurred in Medjugorje since 1981. The production frames these testimonies as a call for the conversion of humanity.
The eight-year process included recording testimonies in multiple countries and interviewing three of the six visionaries linked to the apparitions attributed to the Virgin Mary in Medjugorje. The film combines those accounts with interviews of priests and other participants, along with small-scale biblical recreations staged with the help of young people in Panama City. Filming took the crew through Bosnia and Herzegovina, Israel, Italy, Brazil, Honduras, Peru, Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, Mexico and Spain.
“It took us eight years to make it,” Cotrina said in an interview with La Prensa. The film was also presented to Monsignor Aldo Cavalli, who in November 2021 was named Apostolic Visitator of Medjugorje.
The rollout continues beyond Central America. Cotrina noted that a Portuguese-language version has already premiered in Brazil, with an opening in Uruguay scheduled for October 20, and conversations underway to bring the film to additional countries in November.
Background
Medjugorje, the village at the heart of the documentary, is one of the world’s most visited Marian pilgrimage sites. It attracted global attention beginning in 1981, when six young people reported apparitions of the Virgin Mary — events they say have continued over the decades. The Catholic Church has studied the phenomenon for years, appointing apostolic visitors to oversee pastoral activity at the site, a role Monsignor Cavalli now holds.
Cotrina brings three decades of experience in commercial directing and the audiovisual business to the project, though El Último Llamado de María marks a deeply personal departure for him. The film is aimed primarily at family audiences and presents its story through the voices of its protagonists and their testimonies.
What This Means for Panama
The simultaneous premiere in five Central American countries highlights Panama’s growing capacity to produce feature-length content for international distribution. With filming that spanned more than a dozen countries and localized versions already reaching Brazil, the project demonstrates how a production rooted in Panama can travel across Latin American markets.
Cotrina says he hopes the film offers more than a cinematic experience, creating space for reflection on faith, family and daily life. “What we would most love, above all, is a conversion,” he said of the response he hopes to provoke in viewers.
For Panamanian audiences, the film’s run at Cinépolis offers a local chance to see a homegrown documentary made over nearly a decade, while the planned November expansions will show how far this Panamanian story can reach.
This story was originally reported by La Prensa.