Jayro Bustamante is heading down wind…

The 45-year-old Guatemalan film director and screenwriter, whose most recent film La Llorona made the Oscar international film shortlist, is partnering with Panama’s award-winning Hypatia Films and Jonathan Keasey of Mind Riot Entertainment to make the World War II drama Down Wind.

The film marks a rare collaboration between two major Central American filmmakers and an American writer-producer.

Bustamante will direct based on a screenplay by Keasey, who has also boarded as a producer.

The drama’s lead production company, Hypatia Films, run by Pituka Ortega Heilbron and Marcela Heilbron, is an associate producer on Claire Denis’ Cannes Film Festival competition contender The Stars at Noon, which was filmed in Panama and on which Hypatia provided production services.

Inspired by true events, Down Wind (a working title) is sourced from an article concerning incidents that transpired in the U.S. Southwest towards the end of World War II.

Ortega Heilbron who hopes to shoot the film on location in New Mexico and tap its robust incentives.

For Bustamante, for what would be his first film in English, albeit with some Spanish dialogue, the idea of making Down Wind immediately appealed to him.

“My career has always been tied to themes of discrimination against indigenous people,” said Bustamante, who’s in post on his fourth film and prepping his fifth.