Green-shoot or last stand? Over the last 12 months, as Spain’s economy still hurts, its government has scoured the land from pillar to post for signs of recovery, start-up hothouse talent, new economy rallies,export vectors.

It could have looked no further than San Sebastián’s Festival.

Last year, in the biggest singlemove under Rebordinos, San Sebastiánbowed its 1st Europe Latin AmericaCo-production forum.

“We want ever more names to attend the Forum,” Rebordinos said. This year’s line-up feature films fromon-the-rise helmers. Exhibits A: Sebastián Cordero, whose caringly realistic sci-fi thriller Europa Report, which bowed Aug. 2, has caught Hollywood eye; Fernando Guzzoni, whose Dog Flesh took 2012’s San Sebastián’s New Directors Prize, Milagros Mumenthaller, with her follow-up to 2011’s Back To Stay, which won the Locarno and Mar del Plata fests; and Adrián Saba, whose The Cleaner won Palm Springs’ New Voices/New Visions competition this year.

Already a winner at Locarno’s Carte Blanche and Sanfic’s WIP in Santiago de Chile, Alejandro Fernández Almendras’To Kill a Man is one draw at San Sebastián’s Films in Progress.

The Forum and FIP ensure a stream of pristine film properties for San Sebastián. Their aim is to establish San Sebastián as a must-attend event for anybody interested in Latin America, Rebordinos argued.

Business has already been done on San Sebastián titles. In one pact, Spanish sales company Imagina Intl. Sales has taken world sales rights to Fernando Franco’s The Wound. Victoria Galardi’s I Thought It Was a Party and David Trueba’s Living is Easy With Eyes Closed are the subject of sales agents’ negotiation.

Though final figures won’t be in for nine days, San Sebastián Industry Club accreditations were tracking at 1,183 Tuesday, up about 12% vs. 2012. Spain reps 60% of attendees; 102 execs, repping 74 companies and entities, have signed up from France. With both the Forum and FIP running parallel Sept. 23-25 over three industry days, San Sebastián has sharpened its industry focus.

More prominent and more needed this year, serried round tables – on tax-break and co- production models, pre-financing Spanish movies out of international; Spanish-language movies’ world sales, the economics of shooting in Spain – set a clear roadmap for a Spanish film industry which is seeking to export ever more its movies and while importing foreign shoots.

“I hope that San Sebastián will be a meeting point for the world’s film industry, to discover cinema from all over the world, from Latin America and Spain, and that everybody will find films which suggest something new,” Rebordinos said.

That sense of discovery may depend less on the films available than the will of people to discover.

JOHN HOPEWELL, EMILIANO DE PABLOS