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Erige Sehiri, Danielle Arbid and Francisco Márquez’s latest projects are among the 10 co-productions receiving €60,000 each through the Hubert Bals Fund (Hbf) of the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR).

The projects, eight supported for co-production and two for post-production, are helmed by mostly first- or second-time filmmakers from Singapore, Turkey, Lebanon, Chile, Tunisia, Mexico and Argentina. The European co-producers, through which the projects are awarded, hail from the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, France and Spain.

Tunisian director Sehiri, whose debut Under The Fig Tree debuted in Directors’ Fortnight 2022, is supported for Marie & Jolie. The film centres around a pastor, a trafficker...

Fifteen projects have been selected for the forum, seven from first or second-time directors.

Juan Pablo González and Sergio Castro San Martín are among the filmmakers returning for San Sebastian’s Europe-Latin America Co-Production forum, which runs from September 25-27.

Mexican filmmaker González is back with Agua Caliente after his first work Dos Estaciones went on to win the best acting award for lead actor Teresa Sánchez in the world cinema dramatic competition at Sundance, following its participation in the forum in 2019 and Wip Latam in 2022. Agua Caliente is co-directed with Ana Isabel Fernández de Alba.

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‘Six Months In The Pink And Blue Building’ takes 11th Co-Production Forum best project award.

The main industry prizes of Sebastian have been announced, with awards going to Bruno Santamaría’s Six Months In The Pink And Blue Building, Selman Nacar’s Hesitation Wound, and Martín Benchimol’s The Castle.

The 11th Co-Production Forum best project winner, Six Months In The Pink And Blue Building, marks the third directing credit from cinematographer-editor Santamaria and is told from the perspective of 10-year-old Bru, who is attracted to his friend Vlady and learns that his father has been diagnosed with HIV, sending shock waves through his family.

Six Months In The Pink And Blue Building takes 11th Co-production Forum best project award.

The main industry prizes of Sebastian have been announced, with awards going to Bruno Santamaría’s Six Months In The Pink And Blue Building, Selman Nacar’s Hesitation Wound, and Martín Benchimol’s The Castle.

The 11th Co-production Forum best project winner, Six Months In The Pink And Blue Building, marks the third directing credit from cinematographer-editor Santamaria and is told from the perspective of 10-year-old Bru, who is attracted to his friend Vlady and learns that his father has been diagnosed with HIV, sending shock waves through his family.

Mexico’s Bruno Santamaría, Argentina’s Martín Benchimol and Turkey’s Selman Nacar proved three of the big winners among San Sebastian Industry Awards, announced Wednesday.

João Paulo Miranda, already a young star on Brazil’s film scene after “Memory House,” meanwhile won the Ikusmira Berriak Award.

A Chicago Golden Hugo winner for doc feature “Things We Dare Not Do,” Santamaría swept two awards at the fest’s Europe-Latin America Co-Production Forum, a Mecca for Latin America auteurs and their producers seeking vital co-production partners as state funding prospects have plunged across the region.

Also written by Santamaría, its heavily autobiographical story, set in the ’90s, follows 10-year-old boy Bru, whose father is diagnosed with HIV, sparking his parents break up.“I want to film the glances and conversations that my parents had in silence and which I couldn’t observe as a child and find some sense [in what happened],” Santamaría told Variety.

Thanks in part to a strong co-production drive, 13 Mexican-nationality movies play at San Sebastian this year, a major presence.

Perlak frames Alejandro G. Iñarritu Venice player “Bardo: False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths.” Much of the heat, in industry terms at least, will come from the the premieres and sneak peeks.

In one highlight, Natalia Beristáin will world premiere “Noise” (“Ruido”), before its Netflix November bow. In possibly another, Mexico’s Laura Pancarte (“Non-Western”) unveils “Sueño Mexicano” as a pic-in-post.

Eyes will also be turned to Mexico’s latest generation of auteurs. One director is suddenly very well known: Longtime editor Natalia López Gallardo, a Berlin Jury Prize winner for “Robe of Gems.”

Others are bubbling under: Juan Pablo González whose “Dos Estaciones” impressed at Sundance, Rodrigo Ruiz Patterson, director of “Summer White,” another Sundance title, and Bruno Santamaría, a Gold Hugo best doc winner at the 2020 Chicago Festival...

Eight of the 10 directors in the Morelia Festival’s main Mexican competition are women, led by two of the biggest Mexican fest hits of the year,“Robe of Gems,” Natalia López Gallardo’s Berlin Special Jury laureate, and “Huesera,” from Michelle Garza Cervera, a double Tribeca winner.

Features with Indigenous or Black Mexican protagonists have shot up in Mexico, from 14 in 2019 to 31 in 2019, according to Imcine’s Mexican Cinema Yearbook.

In 2017, Mexico’s biggest homegrown hit was Nicolas López’s “Do It Like an Hombre,” a merciless taunt of a Mexican macho’s helpless homophobia, which grossed 11.0 million in the country.

For centuries an entrenched bastion of machismo, in film terms, the dial is finally moving on diversity.

“When I started out, like 20 years ago, I could count with my fingers the female directors I knew in Mexico; and today, there are almost 100,” says Natalia Beristáin, director of 2017’s Morelia...