Panama Film is celebrating an extraordinary Cannes moment with two competition titles — Sandra Wollner's 'Everytime' in Un Certain Regard and Valeska Grisebach's 'The Dreamed Adventure' in Competition. The Vienna-based production company founded by Lixi Frank and David Bohun has built a reputation for bold, auteur-driven cinema that challenges audiences.
Sources close to the Austrian film industry tell me the celebration is bittersweet. One insider described the current state as 'a golden age being strangled in its crib' — festival success abroad while funding collapses at home. The ÖFI+ program that fueled their rise has been slashed, and producers are scrambling for what's left.
Panama Film's Sandra Wollner won four Austrian Film Awards including Best Feature for 'The Trouble With Being Born.' Timm Kröger's 'The Universal Theory' premiered in Venice Competition. The company was founded in 2018, and their latest Cannes films premiere May 18 ('Everytime') and May 22 ('The Dreamed Adventure'). Austria shut down ÖFI+ funding for theatrical productions due to state budget gaps.
Two Cannes slots is a career-defining moment — but the real drama might be watching whether Panama Film can even afford to make another film after this triumph.
Lixi Frank and David Bohun are living the dream. The Vienna-based producers behind Panama Film have cracked the code that eludes most in the industry: they've got not one, but TWO films premiering at Cannes 2026. Sandra Wollner's 'Everytime' hits Un Certain Regard on May 18, while Valeska Grisebach's competition title 'The Dreamed Adventure' follows four days later.
For a company founded just eight years ago in 2018, this isn't just success — it's validation of everything they've been building toward. But here's where the story takes a turn that these Austrian producers didn't see coming. While they're collecting accolades on the Croisette, back home their government has essentially pulled the rug out from under the industry that made them possible.
The ÖFI+ cash rebate scheme — the 'essential pillar' as Bohun calls it — has been shut down for theatrical productions due to Austria's state budget gap. Think about that: the same films winning awards at Berlinale and Cannes are now being produced without the funding mechanism that fueled their creation. 'We are having the most successful year since our foundation — but so far without funding for an upcoming feature film,' Bohun told The Hollywood Reporter, with a diplomatic frankness that hints at the frustration beneath.
Frank was even more direct about the impact: 'It is impacting the whole industry at the moment.' Their hope now rests on something called the Investment Obligation that Austria's government is supposedly trying to set up this year — but given recent history, you can forgive them for not holding their breath. The irony is almost too perfect. Panama Film chose their name inspired by a Janosch children's book about two tigers searching for 'Panama' — a place of longing that turns out to be right where they started.
Cinema itself, Frank explained, is that place of longing: 'You go on a journey, and you come back out of the same door, but you're somehow enriched.' But what happens when the journey requires resources that no longer exist? Their upcoming project with Alexandra Makarová, 'Fanny Is Alive,' is set in post-war 1947 Vienna — a period piece with 'a high budget' that's planned as a co-production with Germany and at least one more country.
Good luck financing that when your home government has exited the building. The films themselves are worth noting for their sheer audacity. When Wollner presented her treatment for 'Everytime,' including an ending involving the sun doing something 'unexpected,' Frank's reaction was pure tea-rex material: 'What the fuck?!
This is so crazily bold, we want to see this on screen!' Bohun echoed the sentiment about making films in 2026 that actually surprise audiences: 'There have been so many films about grief and people losing somebody. But then comes this thing that just exists in Sandra Wollner's mind.' That's the Panama Film philosophy distilled — chasing the impossible, or at least the deeply weird. Whether Austria's film industry survives long enough to see what they dream up next is another question entirely.
