Ventana Sur Goes to Cannes Unveils 5 First Features to Track

What kind of films are Latin America and Spain’s new generation filmmakers making? 

One answer will be supplied in May at the Cannes Film Festival which includes a showcase, Marché du Film’s Ventana Sur Goes to Cannes – Río de la Plata, highlighting five first features. Among them are Uruguay’s buzzy dramedy “When I Existed,” Spain’s supernatural thriller “The Mantises” and “The Mark of the Jaguar,” a Brazil-Mexico animated Aztec action adventure.

The showcase’s five titles, all in post-production, also take in two films that have worked themselves up the ranks at Ventana Sur: “The Grass,” screened at its 2024 Proyecta project showcase, and “The Way You See Me,” which played at the meet-market’s Punto Género in 2022. 

Shown in excerpts at Cannes, all five films are now in post-production and bid fair to hit festivals later this year.    

“When I Existed” weighs in as a buzzy, feel-good second chance drama comedy “This is a story of reinvention built around the things that truly matter,” says producer Federico Cetta at Uruguay’s El Cielo Cine, who produces with David Matamoros at Spain’s Doce Entertainment.

A highlight at Locarno’s Spanish Previews last August, “The Mantises,” Didac Gimeno’s supernatural coming of age thriller, drinks deep at the well of Spain’s grand tradition of auteur genre cinema: Think “The Orphanage” and [“REC”].

Animated feature “The Mark of the Jaguar: The Awakening of Fire” delivers an ambitious revisionist view of Latin American history, an “epic fantasy” where “Latin American children and their families will see that the story of our mixed heritage is not as it has been told,” writer-director Victor Mayorga told Variety.

“The Grass” is a “poetic realist” film, says director Ivana Galdeano, about single mother Karina raising her children in a humble part of Argüello, Córdoba, Argentina. Winner of a Lacau Colour & Postproduction Prize and the Usheru Audience Award at December’s Ventana Sur, LGBTQ identity doc “The Way You See Me” records the social confrontation sparked by the director’s decision to abandon a female identity. 

“Ventana Sur Goes to Cannes reveals the strength and diversity of Latin American cinema today. The selection spans fiction, documentary, animation and genre, reflecting the richness of our voices and the role of Ventana Sur as a platform that connects our stories with the world,” said Gisella Previtalli, president of Uruguay’s ACAU film-TV agency.

The diversity also mirrors for range of Ventana Sur itself. It began in 2009 highlighting arthouse pics in post-production at its still centerpiece Primer Corte showcase. One, “Leap Year,” picked up by Pyramide, went on to win the 2010 Cannes Festival’s Camera d’Or. In a pioneering move, Ventana Sur also launched a genre platform, Blood Window, and then Animation!, soon the key forum for the medium in Latin America. A doc-feature showcase has followed.   

ACAU organizes the Cannes Festival showcase with the Marché du Film before both partners team late 2026 with Argentina’s INCAA, on the on-site Ventana Sur – Río de la Plata. It will be hosted by ACAU in Montevideo for the second time after a compact, efficient edition in the Uruguayan capital in 2024.   

Organized by the Cannes Festival’s Marché du Film, the Goes to Cannes series of seven showcases of works in progress from festivals and markets all over the world is offering two new awards in 2026: the OCS+ Award, with €15,000 ($17.6 million) for the French distributor of a Goes to Cannes project, and the AH Media Production Award of €10,000 ($11,700) in cash. These prizes join the well-known Sideral Cinema Award of a €10,000 minimum guarantee for one of the projects.

A closer look at the Ventana Sur Goes to Cannes – Río de la Plata titles:

“The Grass,” (Ivana Galdeano, “El Pasto,” Inimaginaria Producciones, Eliana Campos and Brava Cine, Argentina; Los Besos Contenidos Uruguay)

Karina, a single mother, lives in a rudimentary cottage in a humble part of Córdoba, Argentina. “The real work of mothers in working class neighborhoods remains largely invisible. In cinema, everything appears magically done,” Galdeano tells Variety. “Through “intimate moments and shared silences,” “The Grass” “seeks to reveal the profound beauty in everyday acts of care: a mother’s early morning walks to school, the patient kneading of bread, the gentle combing of children’s hair,” she adds.

“The Mantises,” (“Las Mantis,” Didac Gimeno, Mgc, El Médano, Wild Lemon, DarkStudios in Spain;
Motoneta Cine in Argentina)

Part of a new wave of fantasy cinema that embraces the visual and the symbolic as its primary narrative language, Gimeno has told Variety. Shot on Super16mm, “The Mantises” turns on Aitana, 14, who, after her mother’s death, spends the summer at her uncle’s house, whose nearby forest and animals are a portal to the afterlife. Produced by Spain’s MGC and Argentina’s Motoneta Cine, it’s a film “about grief, but also daring to explore the occult, the forbidden and the supernatural as a way to heal,” Gimeno notes

“The Mark of the Jaguar: The Awakening of Fire,” (“La Marca del Jaguar, El Despertar del Fuego,” Victor Mayorga, Origem Content, Brazil; Ocelotl Company, Mexico)

From Origem and Ocelotl, behind Annecy 2021 Contrechamp player “My Uncle Jose,” a fantasy action adventure with drama grounded, however, in archaeological and anthropological record. Set in an Aztec world, young Mexica warrior Xilactzin, accused of stealing sacred bones, crosses to the Mictlan underworld to retrieve them and battle the goddess of darkness, Itzpapalotl. “Strong identity, tenderness and a genuine connection to Latin American culture,” says lead producer Ducca Rios at Origem.

“The Way You See Me,” (“Como tú me ves,” M Untitled, Barlovento Cine, Mexico, Argentina)

Blending documentary and drama, “The Way You See Me” emerges from the director’s “personal experiment grounded in a decision to renounce the expectations imposed on me as a woman,” say helmer M Untitled. “The film turns the gaze back on the viewer, revealing how society polices and perpetuates rigid binary norms that shape who we become and the possibilities to resist them,” M Untitled adds. Sold in international by Paula Portela’s Buenos Aires and Montevideo-based Compañía de Cine.  

“When I Existed,” (“Cuando yo existía,” Alejandro Damiani, Martin Avdolov, El Cielo Cine, Uruguay, with Doce Entertainment, Spain, and Metropolis Films, Uruguay)

Declared dead, Silvio Berlusconi cannot collect his pension, will do anything, caught in bureaucracy, to prove he is alive. Along the way, he reconnects with old friends, the life he left behind and the one he could have had, including his wife and daughter, realizing he doesn’t need a piece of paper to feel alive. Fronted by César Troncoso, star of “The Pope’s Toilet” from Oscar nominee César Charlone and shot in sometimes high-style, its DP is “Society of the Snow” camera operator Manuel Branaa.

‘When I Existed’ – Courtesy of the Marché du Film