Mexican David Pablos’ Las Elegidas, Domestic Animals, from Colombia Andrés Baiz, and Franco’s Night, by Bernardo Arellano, also from México, will feature at the San Sebastián Fest’s 3rd Europe-Latin America Co- Production Forum.

Event will be energized by a Focus on Canada, organized with Telefilm Canada, which sees 11 Canadian producers attending the Forum.

Rapidly positioning as San Sebastián’s centerpieceindustry event – 365 meeting were held in 2012 at the co-pro mart, 461 in 2013 – the Forum runs Sept. 22- 24, parallel to San Sebastián’s Films in Progress pix-in-post strand, fest’s other big industry lure.

Select projects will be invited by Cannes Marché du Film and Argentina’s INCAA Film Institute to attend Ventana Sur, then Cannes’ Market next May. Projects compete for an $10,000 Egeda Award.

Set up at Canana, Las elegidas marks Pablos’ follow-up to The Life After, a teen brother road movie establishing Pablos as a talent to track.

In the line of Canana’s Miss Bala and Sin nombre, producer Pablo Cruz told Variety, Las elegidas turns on child prostitution.

Baiz, (The Hidden Face, Roa) one of new Colombia cinema’s founding fathers, will direct the Dynamo-produced Domestic Animals, a Miami-set dramedy about immigrants, rich and poor – arking Baiz’s first – if only in part – Englishlanguage feature.

A dark bloody suspense thriller with a tragic finale,” in Arellano’s words, Franco’s Night turns on a violent criminal who holes up at a bedraggled hotel, only to fall perilously in love.

Showcasing 15 projects from 14 countries,the Forum features two Colombian projects which have hit pix-in-post competitions earlier this year, prompting acclaim.

Set up at Contravía and structured as a co-production between Germany’s Bredok Film Production, co- roducers of Cannes Palme d’Or winner Winter’s Sleep, and France’s Cine-Sud Promotion, William Vega’s Sal is his follow-up to La Sirga, that world premiered to an upbeat reception at Cannes 2012 Directors’ Fortnight.

A road movie, it turns on Heraldo, a man who takes a motorbike trip across wild arid lands in search of traces of his missing father, only to suffer an accident and be cured by a hermit couple.

Produced by Canadá’s Peripheria Productions, México’s Machete Producciones and Colombia’s Séptima, Juan Andrés Arango’s X Quinientos’ three intertwining stories turn on individuals – a boy from an indigenous village in México; a Buenaventura drug cartel member, the grand-daughter of a Filipino maid in Canadá - who, after a loved one’s death, go through physical transformation.

Produced by Historias Cinematográficas, the company behind not only the films of Luis and Lucía Puenzo but also Clandestine Childhood, Chau, Buenos Aires is written by director Germán Kral and The Son of the Bride co-scribe Fernando Castets.

Of other potential highlights, Siete horas, from Chema Rodríguez (Nightfall in India) is set against the stark reality of Guatemala’s horrific civil war. Project impressed when presented in June at París’ Small is Biutiful.

Davi Pretto, a partner at Porto Alegre’s Tokyo Filmes, and director of memorable docu/fiction portrait Castanha, which played at Berlín this year, will present Ate o Caminho, “somewhere between a road movie, a western and a suspense” film, Pretto told Variety.

Produced by Costa Rica’s La Feria Producciones, Cuban Armando Capo’s August is a coming-of-age-tale set in a 1994 Cuba wracked by food and energy shortages.

Pablo Iraburu and Migueltxo Molina will talk up Walls, a docu-feature about people living on different sides of divisive walls. Other projects are The Return, from actor-director Gorki Glaser-Muller, set up at Zentropa Intl. Sweden; Entre perro y lobo, the latest project from Irene Gutiérrez, (Nueva Isla); Fantasía, from Juan Pablo Richter at Bolivia’s Fantasía Films; and Marilyn, from Argentina’s Martín Rodríguez.

Selected from an Ibermedia Central America/Caribbean development workshop, Alvaro Puente’s Noli, produced by Costa Rica’s Quenepa Producciones, will also be presented at the Forum, out of competition. John Hopewell