Carlos Moreno’s On With the Music!, Javier Fuentes-León’s The Vanished Elephant and Argentinean Ana Katz’s My Park Friend figure among 17 projects selected for 1st Europe Latin America Co-Production Forum.

Kicking off Thursday, and 18 months in the making, the Forum is billed by Jose Luis Rebordinos, San Sebastian fest director, as his biggest fest innovation to date.

Inspired by Andrés Caicedo’s cult novel, and charting an upper-class Cali girl’s joyous descent into drugs, sex and salsa, Music is produced by Colombia’s Dynamo – whose recent film partners include Participant Media and Fox Intl. Prods. Moreno helmed Sundance players Dog Eat Dog and All Your Dead.

A psychological thriller-cum-film noir, Elephant marks Fuentes-León’s follow-up to Sundance 2009 audience award winner Undertow.

Diego Lerman and Nicolás Avruj’s Campo Cine (The Invisible Eye) produce Park, from Katz (A Wondering Bride), about maternity: Its joys, fears and vulnerability.

Up-and-coming talent drive further Forum projects: Mexico’s Nicolás Pereda, Uruguay’s Daniel Hendler, Argentina’s Victoria Galardi and Anahi Berneri.

A step-up in budget and scope for Pereda (The Summer of Goliath), family drama The Day Horses Died turns on Anónimo, a long-in-the-tooth Mexican cowboy re-encountering his estranged children. Mexico’s Film Tank and Spain’s Tornasol Films produce.

Helmer-actor Hendler (Lost Embrace) presents The Pidgeon House, a comedy with political thriller elements.

Daniel Burman and Diego Dubcovsky’s Buenos Aires-based BD Cine produce Open Air, helmed by Berneri (Encarnación), on a couple’s gradual, almost unknowing, separation from each other.

Elena Anaya and Valeria Bertuccelli topline comedy drama I Thought It Was a Party, from Galardi (Mount Bayo), like Katz and Berneri, yet another admired Argentinean distaff helmer.

Select Forum project producers will be invited to its strategic partner events: Cannes Marché’s Producers Network and the Incaa-Cannes-organized Ventana Sur film mart. That facilitates a road map for Europe-Latin American project development, said Jérôme Paillard, Cannes Marché exec director.

Per Rebordinos, running through Friday, just after pix-in-post Films in Progress, the Forum’s aims to create a must-attend four-day industry draw at San Sebastian. The knock-ons have already been seen: FIP has never been so crowded. Studded by name-directors, the Forum also features lesser-known first-time or newish directorial talent.

One is playful romcom Easy Sex & Sad Movies, from sought-after Argentinean screenwriter Alejo Flah (7th Floor), already produced by Spain’s Icónica Prods and Lazona and Argentina’s Cepa Audiovisual and Utópica Cine.

The Whore Truth, from Ecuador’s Gabriela Calvache, is a questioning human trafficking social thriller. From Guatemala, Jayro Bustamante will pitch Death Squad, a Guatemalan village-set black comedy about second chances in life. Maja Zimmermann (Porfirio, Field of Amapolas) produces.

Alex Piperno’s zany, cruise-boat set Window Boy Would Also Like To Have a Submarine has won Hubert Bals and BAL awards.

Among other tyro talent projects: firsttimer Aly Muritiba’s flawed father-shy son drama The Man Who Killed My Beloved Dead; Bolivian Denisse Arancibia’s strikingly odd-ball family tale Poorly Fucked, a re-vindication of weight-challenged women, Las Malcogidas.

Spanish producer-turned-helmerscribe, Luis Angel Ramírez will pitch Claria, a Cuba-set mutant monster thriller, Navarre’s Iñaki Elizalde Pietà, a fiction thriller on a Vatican attempt to eliminate poverty.

Colombian David David will unveil Sin Memoriam, a metaphor for an amnesiac country; Argentinean writer-turned- cineaste Edgardo González darkly comic crime farce I Am Yours, from a Claudia Piñeiro novel.

JOHN HOPEWELL