ABOUT Jean Paul

Jean Paul Vizuete is a Panamanian writer and filmmaker focused on exploring mental health, identity, and our relationship with the environment through speculative fiction. His career began at sixteen, when he shot El Caballero Blanco, an amateur superhero feature that premiered in a local cinema, and that became the seed of what would become his series Arpía.

In 2015 he moved to Buenos Aires to study at Universidad del Cine, where he directed shorts such as Crono (HAYAH 2016) and Prefacio (PIFFLA 2021), and created the web miniseries DREAM (2020). His literary work includes Names Within The Silence (2019) and the fantasy novel The Elven Messenger (2022). He wrote the adaptation of the Argentine musical Mamá está más chiquita for its Panamanian staging, which earned four Escena Award nominations.

In 2020 he co-founded the production company VIZUS Entertainment with his sister Melanie Vizuete, the home of his recent productions. He has been part of the HAYAH International Short Film Festival of Panama since 2018, serving as Programming Director since 2021. Based in Vancouver, he is a Vancouver Film School graduate, Managing Editor of pulpMAG, and a board member of the Vancouver Latin American Film Festival. His short fiction has appeared in literary magazines in Panama and Canada.

His short Memoria (2025) premiered at HAYAH. He is developing the feature Between the Sky (BoliviaLab 2024, with support from Panama's Dirección de Cine), the series Arpía (2024 Panama National Film Fund winner), his novel The Light Thief, and the work-in-progress film A Friend, co-written with Jeho do Carmo.