Mesa & Huezo Win Top San Sebastián Industry Awards — SkimNews
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- Juan Sebastián Mesa won the WIP LATAM Industry Award for "Lovers Go Home!," which follows Alejandra, a Medellín webcam model, and Andrew, a disabled New Jersey war veteran, whose online exchanges shift from sexual propositions into deeper emotional complicity.
- Tatiana Huezo won the EGEDA Platino Industria Award for best WIP Latam with "Galerna," about two people casting non-professional actors for a science fiction film as they travel to remote locations and stay in the homes of Mexican farmers.
- Mesa's debut feature "Los nadie" (2016) won the Venice Critics' Week Audience Award; "Lovers Go Home!" had previously been selected for San Sebastián's 2022 Co-Production Forum.
- Huezo's "The Echo" won Best Director and Best Documentary in Berlin's Encounters section in 2023, while her 2016 film "Tempest" took Ariel Awards for Best Director and Best Documentary and earned a Goya nomination for Best Ibero-American Film.
- Both winning films are still works in progress, meaning the awards arrive before the projects are finished — a typical industry-award pattern at San Sebastián designed to help projects secure completion financing and international co-production partners.
Why it matters: San Sebastián's WIP LATAM awards are designed to help unfinished Latin American films lock in completion financing and international buyers. Both winners arrive with established festival pedigrees — Mesa from Venice Critics' Week, Huezo from two Berlin-recognized documentaries — giving their unfinished projects unusually strong commercial momentum at a key autumn market for Spanish-language cinema.
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