Click here to read the full article.
Some of Latin America’s greatest arthouse directors –Celina Murga, Mariana Rondón, Santiago Loza, Matias Mariani and Christopher Murray– feature among 15 projects set to be unveiled at San Sebastián’s 2026 Europe-Latin
America Co-Production Forum, the Spanish festival’s biggest industry centerpiece.
The selection also frames hot emerging director such as Ernesto Martínez (The Devil Smokes”) and first features which are sure to create interest. One case in point: Selma Cervantes’ “Mourning Sound,” set up at Teorema, founded by Michel Franco and partner Eréndira Núñez Larios and behind award-winning films such as “Memory,” “New Order,” “Heroic,” “Flies,” “Chronic” and “From Afar.”
Galvanised by new and emerging talent, the 2026 lineup also serves as a tribute to what outgoing San Sebastián Festival director José Luis Rebordinos has achieved with the Forum: Consolidating it as Europe’s most significant Latin American meet and mart when a presence at co-production platforms has become ever more essential for the survival of so many Latin American filmmakers.
Selected for the Forum, “The Rehearsals” marks Murga’s follow-up to “The Freshly Cut Grass,” presented by Martin Scorsese and a Tribeca best screenplay winner, and Murga’s fourth fiction film – after “Ana and the Others” (2003), “A Week Alone” (2007) and Berlin competition contender “The Third Side of the River” – films often displaying a large sense of place and unspoken but keenly observed emotions.
Mariani impressed highly with his Berlin Panorama title “Shine Your Eyes,” a Netflix pick-up for the world. “‘Nature Boy’ began when I asked myself: what would it be like to be the father of an alien?” Mariani told Variety of his new Forum project.
Rondón, behind another 2026 Forum project, “Looking for Sam,” won San Sebastián’s top Golden Shell in 2013 with “Bad Hair,” and, more recently, “It Would Be Night in Caracas,” a gripping thriller, Variety said, with Edgar Ramírez (“American Crime Story”) and Natalia Reyes (“Terminator: Dark Fate”).
San Sebastián-bound with “Giant Stones,” Murray competed in Venice 2016 main competition with “The Blind Christ” and at Sundance with “Sorcery” in 2024.
“The Amateurs,” (“Los Inexpertos,” Felipe Solari Yrigoyen, Chile, Argentina)
Produced by Chile’s Quijote Films (“The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo”) and Argentina’s Gentil Cine, and set at an eccentric convention populated by people dressed as iconic movie characters where the original Maltese Falcon statuette vanishes along with a mysterious Russian guest. “The Amateurs” shows “how ordinary people, in a remote corner of South America and far from Hollywood, are forced to step up when circumstances spiral beyond their control,” says Solari about his potential feature debut.
“Ash Mother,” (“Mamá Ceniza,” Tana Gilbert, Chile-Germany)
Blending archival research with hand-drawn rotoscoping, Gilbert’s follow-up to “Malqueridas,” Grand Prize winner at Venice Critics’ Week 2023, revisits a mother who killed her daughters during Chile’s nitrate crisis. Producer Paola Castillo says the technique creates “an ethical distance, without revictimizing.” Chile’s Errante produces with Germany’s Dirk Manthey Film, in a project connecting that historical case with mothers facing similar judgments a century later.
“Diario Inconsciente,” (Santiago Loza, Argentina-Uruguay)
Thirty years after a young man entered psychiatric hospitalization carrying a notebook and camera, Loza reconstructs those days through documents and recreations, rooted in a deeply personal experience from his own youth. Varsovia Films produces with Uruguay’s Monarca Films, while Compañía de Cine has boarded international sales. Now finalizing its script and financing, the project is, in Loza’s words, “a poetic tale of survival” that also explores mental health, friendship and filmmaking.
“Dirty Face,” (“Cara Sucia,” Ignacio Acconcia, Spain-Uruguay)
Ayhe Productions and Kabiria Films back Acconcia’s fiction feature debut, following Bruno, a Black teenager with vitiligo sentenced to work at a residential home for minors with functional diversity, where he unexpectedly finds acceptance. Producer David Aymerich calls it “a special coming-of-age story portraying a reality rarely seen on screen.” Selected at Locarno’s Match Me!, the project is set to shoot in March 2027.
“Giant Stones,” (“Piedras gigantes,” Christopher Murray, Chile)
The story of U.K. archaeologist Katherine Routledge’s arrival in 1914 on Rapa Nui to study its monumental moia statues and her conflictive role in an indigenous uprising. Winner of Hubert Bals Fund Development Support and set up at Fernando Bascuñan’s Planta which had three films at Cannes from Dominga Sotomayor (“La Perra”), Lisandro Alonso (“Double Freedom”) and Federico Luis (“For the Opponents”).
“The Illusions,” (“Las ilusiones,” Ingrid Pokropek, Argentina-Spain)
Three Buenos Aires strangers make wishes on a shooting star, only for a cosmic mix-up to grant each someone else’s desire, setting fame, grief and love on a collision course. Pokropek says “the world of ‘The Illusions’ is luminous in the middle of darkness.” 36 Caballos produces with Spain’s Jaibo Films. In advanced development for a fall 2027 shoot, the project has secured ICAA minority co-production support and passed through Berlinale Talents Project Market, EAVE Puentes and ECAM Forum.
“Isabel Hernández,” (Giorgio Giampà, Italy-Mexico)
Seven years of research in Guatemala underpin Giampà’s first feature. “Working largely with non-professional actors whose own lives resonate with the story,” he says, the film follows a young agronomist searching for the truth about the father who abandoned her. Zoe Films and LaDoc produce with Mexico’s Fiasco. Set to shoot in autumn 2027, the project has passed through TorinoFilmLab FeatureLab and EAVE Producers Workshop.
“The Last Cruise,” (“El último crucero,” Rachel Daisy Ellis, Brazil-Spain-Argentina)
British-Brazilian filmmaker and longtime Gabriel Mascaro producer and creative collaborator Ellis turns to her own documentary work with “The Last Cruise,” a feature in development at Recife-based Desvia Filmes. Her directing debut, “Eros,” premiered at CPH:DOX, while she most recently produced Mascaro’s “The Blue Trail,” winner of Berlin’s Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize. Camile Reis produces alongside Ellis on the project.
“Looking for Sam,” (“Buscando a Sam,” Mariana Rondón, Peru, Venezuela, Mexico)
13 years after “Bad Hair,” Sam, its lead, has been forced to emigrate from Venezuela. Searching for him, director Rondón and producer Marité Ugas end up at the fashion catwalks Paris, discovering a tale of personal reinvention. “‘Looking For Sam’ wanders between fiction and documentary, where memory and identity blur and transform one another. It forces us to ask ourselves who we are when we leave behind who we once were,” says Rondón tells Variety.
“Modern Mermaids Revolution,” (“La revolución de las sirenas modernas,” Azul Vanni, Uruguay-Argentina-Brazil)
Vanni calls her feature debut “my own manifesto on how travesti and trans experiences can be represented in cinema.” Its protagonist, Sienna, loses her voice and begins growing scales after nearly drowning, entering an underground world of desire and danger. Uruguay’s Monarca Films produces alongside Argentina’s Groncho Estudio and Brazil’s Estudio Giz. Now financing for a first-half 2028 shoot, the project has passed through Tres Puertos, MECAS and Berlinale Talents Buenos Aires.
“Mourning Sound,” (“El último sonidero,” Selma Cervantes, Mexico)
After years abroad, Karina returns to Mexico following her mother’s death. Estranged from a country that no longer feels like home, she and her brother Nacho find a way to bridge their differences through their family’s tradition of being sonideros: DJs at popular neighbourhood dances. Cervantes’ first feature, following the success of her short film “Sweatshop Girl,” starring Yalitza Aparicio, which premiered at Sundance 2023.
“Nature Boy,” (“O Estranho Meninho,” Matias Mariani, Brazil)
A departure for Mariani? “Celestino, a São Paulo public-school principal whose life fits on a form, takes in a boy who speaks no known language — a boy who absorbs organic matter, transforms with everything he consumes, and is quietly studying the man learning, against his will, to be his father. the logline runs. A sci-fi family drama penned with “Shine Your Eyes” co-scribe Maíra Bühler from Primo Filmes and Tatiana Leite’s Bubbles Project. A title to track.
“The Rehearsals,” (“Los Ensayos,” Celina Murga, Uruguay, Argentina)
Eva (48) accompanies her mother Emilia (80), a prestigious retired doctor facing the progression of Alzheimer’s. The family home is also shared by two caregivers, Eva’s teenage son and her younger sister. Amid improvised celebrations, hospital visits and conflicts over care, a mysterious presence of bulls surrounds the house. “Blending realism and the fantastic, the film explores fragility and the possibility of finding love and vitality in being there for another person,” while “reflecting on the way our society looks at aging, deterioration and death,” Murga told Variety.
“They’re Taking Your Congos Away,” (“Te vienen a quitar tus congos,” Nelson Carlo De Los Santos Arias, Dominican Republic-Spain)
One of the doyens of Dominican cinema, De Los Santos Arias returns after winning Berlin’s 2024 Silver Bear for Best Director with “Pepe.” His new project is an odyssey tracing the legacy of Spanish colonialism across the Caribbean. It is set up at Monte y Culebra, one of the Dominican Republic’s leading independent production companies.
“This Is the Memory I Would Like to Have of Mom,” (“Este es el recuerdo que me gustaría tener de mamá,” Ernesto Martínez Bucio, Mexico, Spain)
Next up from Martínez Bucio and screenwriter Karen Plata after scoring the Berlinale Perspectives first feature award with childhood survival tale “The Devil Smokes,” “a distinctive debut feature which steers what could be a familiar home-alone tale into darker psychological recesses,” Variety said in its review.
