Sebastián Cordero’s Such is Life in the Tropics, Fernando Guzzoni’s Nobody Boy and Adrián Saba’s Donde suenan los salvajes are among 16 projects selected for the San Sebastián Festival’s 2nd Europe-Latin America Co- Production Forum, one of its main industry events, which kicks off Monday. San Sebastián’s Forum is supported by the Cannes Market’s and Argentina’s Incaa Film Institute with select project producers being invited to Ventana Sur and next May’s Cannes Producers Network.

Rolling off Magnolia’s U.S. bow on Aug. 2 of sci-fi thriller Europa Report, Cordero’s first full English-language movie,Tropics marks his return to Spanishlanguage filmmaking. Structured as a classical tragedy and set in his native Ecuador, it tells the tale of a Guayaquil bigwig, who fortuitously kills a boy on an illegal deer hunt.

First fruit of Ecuador’s Carnaval Cine, whose partners are Cordero, screenwriter Andrés Crespo and producer Arturo Yépez, Tropics was already stirring buzz on the international market in the run-up to the Forum.

It is also under development at the 5th Puentes Europe- Latin America Producers Workshop.

A dysfunctional father-son relationship drama produced by Paz Urrutia at Chile’s Solita Producciones, Nobody Boy reps Guzzoni’s follow-up to debut Dog Flesh, which took San Sebastián’s New Directors Prize in 2012.

First presented at Toulouse’s Cinema in Development, Donde sueñan los salvajes, about a teen enamored of his Lima gang leader’s sister, was developed at Cannes Cinefondation Residence. Saba’s micro-budget debut, The Cleaner, won Palm Springs’ 2013 New Voices/New isions competition. It also tied down asales agent deal, being picked up by Xavier Henry-Rashid’s Film Republic.

In a major reshaping of San Sebastián’s industry events, the 2nd Forum will run Sept. 23- 25, parallel to fest’s Films in Progress, one of the strongest pix-in-post showcases in the Spanishspeaking world.

Dating creates an effective three-day eet-mart concentrating industry attendance and biz at the Spanish festival. A mass of Latin American producers, with and without projects, hit San Sebastián over the weekend, their numbers swelling on Sunday.

Marking further departures, Spanish rights collection society Egeda will award a Euros10,000 ($13,000) cash prize to the Forum’s best project; one roject will also be invited to the Central American/Caribbean development workshop organized by theIbermediaProgram film fund for Latin America, Spain and Portugal.

Further Forumprojects feature upand- coming talent such as Argentina’s ilagros Mumenthaler, México’s Lucía Carreras and Cuba’s Pavel Giroud.

Produced out of Argentina by Violeta Bava and Rosa Martínez Rivero’s Ruda Cine, Mumenthaler’s Pozo de aire is her awaited follow-up to 2011’s Back To Stay, which topped the Locarno and Mar del Plata fests.

Backed by México’s Filmadora Producciones, whose The Noble Family scored a huge $26.3 million for Warner Bros. in México earlier this year, the solitude-themed Tamara and the Ladybug is helmed by Carreras, co-scribe of Matthew Rowe’s rave-reviewed Cannes Camera d’Or winner Leap Year.Unspooling during the early days of AIDS in Cuba, Giroud’s El acompañante is set up at Edgard Tenembaum’s Parisbased Tu Vas Voir, the producer of Walter Salles’ The Motorcycle Diaries.

A well-regarded Spanish distaff director, best known for politically-tinged dramas, (Ander eta Yul, Paisito), Ana Díez will present La puerta del amor.

Other movie projects to be pitched at San Sebastián include César Augusto Acevedo’s rural drama La tierra y la sombra, produced by Diana Bustamante’s Colombia-based Burning Blue, Uruguayan comedy Las toninas van al este, from Gonzalo Delgado and Verónica Perrotta, Camino de paz, Argentinean Francisco Varone’s odd-couple friendship drama between an aged and ill Muslim and a young slacker, and A la sombra de los árboles, Chilean Matías Rojas’ real-eventinspired child abuse chronicle, winner of June’s Bolivia Lab. It marks Rojas’ follow-up to Raiz, which world premieres at San Sebastián in its Horizontes Latinos section.

Also at the Forum: Brazilian Andre Gevaerd’s Do outra lado da lua, documentary La noche oscura del alma, from Colombia’s Augusto Sandino, co-producer of Karen Cries on a Bus,
and another Colombian project, Mario Esteban Castaño’s Amazon-set Virgen exótica, which was well-received at a Huelva co-production meet.

Two more Spanish projects - Pedro Aguilera’s Demonios tus ojos and Antonio Cuadri’s Operación Concha – will also be presented to potential co-producers and sales agents.

JOHN HOPEWELL, EMILIANO DE PABLOS