About
A Panamanian film and television house, founded by two siblings, with seventeen years of history.
2009
Vizu’s Films
In March 2009, in the backyard of a house in Albrook, Panama, Vizu’s Films was born. A group of school friends began filming home movies with whatever they had on hand, until they embarked on a superhero feature: El Caballero Blanco, the story of a hero facing corruption in Panama. It premiered in 2011 to a packed house at the Cinépolis in Multiplaza Pacific. Over the years each of them went their own way and the company dissolved.
2020
VIZUS Entertainment
The Vizuete siblings founded VIZUS Entertainment to honor that beginning: the same root, now shaped by experience. A Panamanian film and television house that has since produced and premiered projects across Panama, Argentina, and Canada, and is now developing its first series, Arpía.
"Stories that may change you, as they changed us."
Team
Registered in Panama and founded in 2020 by the Vizuete siblings, who work between Vancouver and Panama City.
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Melanie Vizuete Santos
Co-founder · Executive Director
Melanie Vizuete Santos is a Panamanian producer, lawyer, and actress based in Vancouver. Her relationship with cinema began in childhood, making home movies alongside her older brother, with whom she founded the production company Vizu’s Films.
Since 2017 she has produced short films (La Ladrona de Luces, DREAM, Memory) and worked as a production assistant (Operación Causa Justa, Salsipuedes) and on the first edition of MasterChef Panamá. She produced the musical Mamá está más chiquita, which earned four Premios Escena nominations. In Vancouver she graduated with honours from Acting for Film and Television at Vancouver Film School and earned a Business Administration diploma from BCIT; in 2022 she was a Crazy8s semifinalist as producer of Lilac. In 2025 she co-founded the Canadian production company Happy Hippie Sunshine Films. She is currently producing La Residencia, winner of the 2022 Panama Feature Film Development Fund and the 2023 Fondo Cine Panamá, now in post-production and recognized at Málaga Work in Progress 2025 and the LALIFF Amazon Post Production Fund 2025. She champions Latin American projects with an auteur identity and international potential.
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Jean Paul Vizuete
Co-founder · Creative Director
Jean Paul Vizuete is a Panamanian writer and filmmaker whose work explores the human condition through speculative fiction. At 15 he premiered at a local cinema El Caballero Blanco, an amateur feature about a Panamanian superhero that planted the seed for his series project, Arpía.
In 2015 he moved to Argentina to study at the Universidad del Cine, where he defined his auteur mark: mental health, faith, and the individual’s relationship with their surroundings, told through the fantastic genre and magical realism. He published the short-story collection Nombres en el Silencio (2019) and the novel La Mensajera (2022), adapted the musical Mamá está más chiquita (four Premios Escena nominations), and created the miniseries DREAM during the pandemic. Since 2018 he has been part of the HAYAH Panama International Short Film Festival, where he is Programming Director. After training as a screenwriter at Vancouver Film School, he is developing his novel La Ladrona de Luces, the feature Between the Sky (BoliviaLab 2024, supported by the Film Directorate of Panama’s Ministry of Culture), and the series Arpía (Fondo Cine Panamá 2024, Series Development).
