Piriapolis,Oskarlab, Oskar and Human Rights and Blessed Calamity looked like standouts at Monday’s San Sebastián Madrid-Ile de France Co-Production Meeting.

Helmed by Uruguayan Esteban Schroeder (Kill Them All),Piriapolis, a historical drama, is set up at Jacques Arlandis’Paris-based LaVega Prods.Maiz Prods. produces out of Argentina, Schroeder’s label La Suma from Uruguay.

Written by Arlandis and Schroeder and set in 1905 Uruguay, Piriapolis is a period drama with a thriller subplot,Arlandis said at the CRC meet.

It turns on Francisco Piria, a powerful entrepreneur, and Jean Dufrement, an architect, who both dream of constructing utopias, Piria South America’s first seaside resort, Dufrement an Uruguayan Luna Park.

Vet Spanish film and TVexec Oscar Vega - who worked at Telson, then Vertice 360 – had two projects at the CRC forum,both set up at Madrid-based shingle Cre-Accion Films. The biggest was Oskarlab,a kids-skewed animated toon pic,budgeted at just Euros2.75 million ($3.8 million), and co-produced by Basque anmation studio Silverspace. Storyline turns on children discovering for themselves what infants’ rights consist of.

A 2D feature with large multi-platform potential,Oskarlab pulled down $685,000 from Spain’s ICAAFilm Institute, the biggest project-stage subsidy possible,Cre-Accion’s Rodolfo Montero said in Donostia.

A buddy crime comedy set up at Madrid’s Imval Prods., Gaizka Urresti’s Blessed Calamity has been taken for Spanish distribution by Luis Angel Bellaba’s Aquelarre Films. Urresti was shopping a teaser at San Sebastián.

Imval plans an April shoot.
The CRC meet saw a lower French presence than in recent years.Though some Gallic sales agents– led by respected Orly Films vet Alain Vannier, on the hunt for Spanish projects – attended the CRC meet, at 10 companies Gallic shingles signed up for the event were half that of 2010.

Low-budget or even micro-budget projects abounded.

“In France there are now a lot of films shooting for around $2.7 million,” said Gabriel Mamruth, who was touting a treatment for the buzzed-up screenplay of 11247.

To shoot in Buenos Aires, Paris and Madrid, psychological thriller 11247 has a Spanish Interpol agent discovering that his Argentinean father,who officially disappeared under the Argentina’s ‘80s Junta, is still alive.

“It’s better to go down in budget than wait four-or-five years to make a movie,” Mamruth added.

One low-budget Spanish project – budgeted at $1.2 million - also drawing interest at the CRC meet was Nicolas Alcala’s sci-fier “The Cosmonaut,” a Creative Commons- licensed movie which will by co-produced Zentropa Intl.Spain,ZIS’David Matamoros’ told Variety.

Madrid-based Riot Cinema produces. “Alcala’s talent and his screenplay are a
knock-out,” Matamoros said.

EMILIANO DE PABLOS, JOHN HOPEWELL