Steeping this year’s Cannes in late-night carnage and eerie fantasy, Blood Window, Ventana Sur’s genre film market, will team with the world’s top six fantastic film fests for five Blood Window Midnight Galas of Latin American genre movies, Variety said.

The genre pic Croisette spread comes as Blood Window has inked a framework collaboration with Sitges, Europe’s biggest fantastic fest, which is a recognition of both the build in Latin American genre production and Blood Window as a driving factor in their promotion.

Four event partners collaborate to select one film each at the Blood Window Galas: Austin’s Fantastic Fest, Spain’s Sitges-Catalonia Festival, the Puchon Fantastic Fest, and the Frontieres Co-production Market, a joint venture of Montreal’s Fantasia Fest, Vision-in-Motion and Brussels Festival.

As at Blood Window, Mexico’s Morbido Fest will prize the best film at the Screenings with a mix of post-production services and Mexican distribution.

Instancing the growing diversification of Latin American genre production, the first Blood Window Midnight Galas line-up includes two sci-fi movies – “The Incident” and “Fallen Cape” – plus a rabies outbreak movie with Sapphic undertones: “Darkness by Day.”

Helmed by Mexico’s Isaac Ezban, and chosen by Austin’s Fantastic Fest, where it won a Special Mention for Best Presentation at the Fantastic Market last September, “The Incident” combines two stories of people trapped in illogical endless spaces for 35 years: Two brothers and a detective locked on an infinite stairwell, and a family on an endless road to the beach.

“’The Incident’ is the first completed film from Fantastic Fest’s international genre co-production market: Fantastic Market,” said Fantastic Fest Director Kristen Bell.

Ezhan “is an exciting young filmmaker whose talent and creativity are on sharp display,” she added.

The Fantastic Market and Blood Window have already inked a collaboration that will see two projects and a couple of pix-in-post at last December’s Blood Window being presented at September’s 2nd Fantastic Market. In return, the upcoming Blood Window will invite two pitching projects and two works in progress – an innovation at Austin this year – from the Fantastic Market.

Directed by Spain’s Santiago Alvarado, and put forward by Sitges, “Fallen Cape” turns on a wrongly disgraced superhero, forced to work in a store.

In a further link-up with Sitges, Blood Window will co-organize a Latin American fantastic film showcase at October’s Sitges fest, the Catalan fest announced Thursday. The two events are studying co-operation in co-productions, the generation of new talent and its industry impact, it added.

Put forward by South Korea’s Puchon-PiFan Fest, “Darkness by Day,” a village-set mood genre auteur piece helmed by Argentine’s Martin Desalvo, is sold by Germany’s M-Appeal.

Unspooling May 16-20 at the Rue d’Antibes’ Star Cinema, the Blood Window showcase kicks off with Gabriel Grieco’s “Still Life,” also from Argentina.

A serial killer slasher/procedural set in Argentina’s big ranch country where the suspects all belong to a group of vegan activists and the victims to the cattle industry, “Still Life” snagged four plaudits at Blood Window’s Bloody Work In Progress last December, including selection for Morbido’s 2014 edition.

The Cannes showcase closes with “The House at the End of Time,” from Venezuela’s Alejandro Hidalgo, a symptomatic mix of horror – a mother of two experiences ghoulish apparitions in an old house – with reflections on the psychology of family dynamics: 30 years later, now elderly, she returns to try to discover what really happened.