Ventana Sur Proyecta unveils 12 debut features with star names

Twelve first and second features will chase partners at Ventana Sur Proyecta 2026, with Maeve Jinkings and Natalia Oreiro already attached to star, according to Variety.

The lineup was published on Oct. 14. It is limited to early-career directors from Latin America and Europe.

Proyecta is a co-production forum, a market where directors and producers pitch unfinished films to financiers. It is run jointly by Ventana Sur with Spain's San Sebastian Festival and the Marché du Film, the business arm of the Cannes Festival.

The loudest cast attachment is “Cabildo 71.” Jinkings is set to star in the Uruguay-Brazil-Argentina-Spain co-production, directed by Victoria “Pitoka” Pena as her second feature. Jinkings had a pivotal role in Walter Salles’ Oscar-winning “I’m Still Here,” according to Variety.

The film is based on real events. It tells of women held in Cabildo, a prison-convent run by nuns of the Good Shepherd. It is lead-produced by Uruguay’s Monarca Films, with Una Presencia, Vitrine Filmes and Boulevard Filmes attached. Pena’s debut, “Delia,” won the Silver Biznaga for best director at the Malaga Film Festival. Oreiro, the Uruguayan-Argentine actor and singer, is set to appear in “The Other Mountain.”

Another backed debut is “Give Me Shelter.” The project comes from Rei Pictures, which works across Argentina, Mexico and Spain. The company is behind Lucrecia Martel’s Venice-selected “Our Land,” Argentina’s Oscar submission “Kill the Jockey” and Cannes Un Certain Regard winner “The Settlers.”

“Give Me Shelter” will be the feature debut of Nicolas Perez Veiga. He won seven Cannes Lions awards in advertising, earned an International Emmy nomination for “Out There” and directed “Ringo, Glory and Death.”

Mexico’s “The Absence,” or “La Ausencia,” is the feature debut of Jorge Sistos Moreno. It was developed at the Cannes Critics’ Week Next Step workshop and is produced by Julio Chavezmontes’ Piano, based in Mexico City. Sistos Moreno’s short “The Darkness” played in Cannes Critics’ Week in 2022.

Peru is represented by “Portrait Huaco,” the second feature from Melina Leon. Her “Song Without a Name” premiered in the 2019 Cannes Directors’ Fortnight. The new film is boarded by France’s Luxbox and Spain’s Amore Cine, sales and production companies that help arrange finance and distribution.

Other titles include “Los Mejores Dias,” set up at Juan Pablo Miller’s Tarea Fina in Argentina, the company behind Cannes Camera d’Or winner “Las Acacias.” Colombia’s Ocultimo, co-founded by Simon Mesa Soto, brings “Rabbits” from a new Colombian director. Mesa Soto directed “A Poet,” winner of the Cannes Un Certain Regard Jury Prize. Spain’s entry is “Dirty Face,” or “Cara sucia,” the fiction feature debut of Ignacio Acconcia.

What makes this stand out for viewers is the timing. These are scripts and early packages, not finished films. For fans, this means the directors and deals named here are the ones likely to reach festivals and cinemas in the next two years.