Ana Katz’s anticipated My Park Friend, Salvador del Solar’s Magallanes and Jayro Bustamante’s Ixcanul are three of the six titles that have made the cut for San Sebastián’s 26th Films in Progress.

It runs Sept. 22-24, parallel to the Europe-Latin America Co-Production Forum, the Spanish fest’s other big industry event.

The double-play has established the fest as Europe’s prime early fall crossroads for muscular contingents of Latin American producers and French sales agents.

Three of the directors in Films In Progress presented projects at SanSebastián’s inaugural Co-Production Forum, a sign of SanSebastián also becoming a regular port-of-call for Latin America’s new generation of directors, whether they have projects, pix-in-post or completed titles.

Friend turns on a first- ime mom who befriends another young mother in a cold and windy district park in Buenos Aires. Their friendship takes a slightly dangerous turn.

Buenos Aires’ Campo Cine, owned by Nicolas Avruj and producer-director Diego Lerman, whose Refugiado played Cannes Directors’ Fortnight to an upbeat reception and sales for Memento Films Int’l., produces out of Argentina, Cordón Films out of Uruguay.

Boasting a top-notch pan-Latin American cast, and a three-way Perú- Argentina-Colombia co-production – a sign of a project’s potential playability in Latin America - Magallanes marks the directorial debut of actor-turned helmer Salvador del Solar, the male lead in Francisco Lombardi’s Captain Pantoja and the Special Services, and very recently, The Vanished Elephant, Javier Fuentes León’s follow-up to Sundance 2010 World Cinema Audience Award winner Undertow.

Ixcanul is building buzz as a film which begins as a social issue portrait of a Kaqchikel community, seen through the romantic tribulations of a 17-year-old girl, but builds to near thriller heights, packing multiple final twists. Set up as a Guatemala-French co-production, it is directed by Bustamante, one of Guatemala’s highestprofile young helmers.

Of further titles, Brazilian first- imer Aly Muritiba has flawed father-shy son drama To My Beloved Dead, now in post, a project at the first Forum. Catalina Saavedra (The Maid) leads the cast of Chilean Sergio Castro’s The Mud Woman, produced by San Sebastián’s Storyboard Media and Chile’s Prize Producciones, about a grape-picker hoping to scrape together the funds to visit her brother in the big city.

Shot in Pergamino, in the province of Buenos Aires, Argentine Eugenio Canevari’s Paula turns on a maid on a rural estate who suffers an unwanted pregnancy. John Hopewell