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.

Armando Espitia (Heli) and Sofia Espinosa (Gloria) are attached to star in the comedy drama with a tragic undertow.

In further Forum awards, Sofía Quirós’ Madre Pájaro – reuniting the same creative team behind her feature debut, 2019 Cannes Critics’ Week player Land of Ashes – won the Artekino International Award for a story about Oliver, 7, who, when his mother falls gravely ill, becomes increasingly attached to Paloma, a 25-year old neighbor. Producers are Mariana Murillo at Costa Rica’s Sputnik Films and Sazy Salim of Argentina’s Murillo Cine.

The Film Center Serbia Award went to The Fire Doll, from Chilean director-to-track Niles Atallah (Rey), about a nine-year-old girl who battles to help her father free himself from ghosts of the past. Chile’s Globo Rojo Films produces with Raphael Berdugo’s Paris-based Cité Films, which handles world sales.

In San Sebastian’s pix-in-post competitions, the big winner in WIP Latam was The Castle, in which Justina is given a colossal mansion deep in the Argentinian Pampa on the condition that she never sells it. Produced by Gema Juárez Allen at Gema Films, which has Pornomelancholy in main competition, the film marks the fiction feature debut of Benchimol whose The Dread, co-directed by Pablo Aparo, scooped best medium-feature doc at 2017’s IDFA.

A Strange Path, from Brazil’s Guto Parente, (The Cannibal Club), won a Projeto Paradiso First Prize from the non-profit promotion org for Brazilian talent and movies. Its Second Prize went to Davi Pretto (Castanha), another social issue rural drama for Pretto after Rifle, which won the Grand Prize at Jeonju Film Festival.

Nacar won his second WIP Europa award in three editions for Hesitation Wound, an ethical thriller set among Turkey’s middle class, a winning set-up in 2020’s WIP Europa laureate Between Two Dawns.

Catching attention with Memory House, the only Latin American movie in Cannes 2020 Official Selection, João Paulo Miranda’s Bandeira (Flag) from won a coveted post production award from top Basque production house Irusoin, given to one of the projects at San Sebastian’s prestigious Ikusmira Berriak development residency.

JOHN HOPEWELL