Film revives saga of missing Dutch girls in Panama

Two young Dutch women, who came to Panama nine years ago and disappeared while walking along the El Pianista trail in Boquete are the subject of a film  “Siniestro,” which will be participating in the national 2023 Cinema Fund competition.

Kris Kremers 22, and Lisanne Froon, 21 arrived in Panama in March 2014 and after touring the country moved to Chiriquí, to serve as volunteers with children in the area.

Jimmy Rangel a producer and screenwriter will revive the high-profile case of the Dutch girls.

The participants of the projects presented in the competition are chosen by an international jury that evaluates different categories. the winners receive monetary funds for the production and post-production of their projects.

In the morning hours of April 1, the young women began a walk near the cloud forests that surround the Barú volcano along  the El Pianista trail The route is about 4 km long and takes around 3 to 4 hours to complete

From the top of the volcano, you can see the city of Boquete and two oceans: the Pacific and the Atlantic. This is what attracted the walkers. However, in 2016, there were warnings about some official restrictions on walking the trail due to cloud cover levels, although it was not closed in its entirety.

After the alert, the authorities informed tourists that undertaking the route would be at their own risk and with the option of a guide.

Kris and Lisanne were taken by taxi to where the trail route begins It was the last time they were seen.

The next day, the girls missed an appointment, which led to the alert of their disappearance. On April 6, the families of the women arrived in Panama and, accompanied by canine units, police, and detectives from the Netherlands, began an exhaustive search that lasted more than ten days, without any results.

Ten weeks later, on June 14, an indigenous woman found a backpack that she reported to the authorities as having found along the bank of a river near her town of Alto Romero, in the province of Bocas del Toro. The backpack contained two pairs of sunglasses, $83.00, Froon’s passport, a bottle of water, Froon’s camera, two bras, and the women’s cell phones in good condition.

The girls’ phones showed that about six hours into their walk, someone dialed 112 (the international emergency number in use in the Netherlands) and 911 (the emergency number in Panama). Kremers’ iPhone 4 made the first attempt at a distress call at 4:39 pm and there was a second attempt from Froon’s Samsung Galaxy S III at 4:51 pm, but none of the 77 calls were successful due to lack of signal in the area.
The discovery of the backpack motivated the search to be restarted. Two months later, near the place where the backpack was discovered, human remains were discovered that DNA tests would confirm belonged to Kris and her partner.