At the Costa Rica Media Market (CRMM), Sitges Film Festival director general Monica Garcia joined Morbido CEO Pablo Guisa and Mexican director Luis Javier Henaine to launch the Latin American arm of WomanInFan, a genre-film initiative, and to discuss the rise of women directors in Latin American genre cinema. The panel highlighted growing regional strength in horror and fantasy filmmaking, even as female directors continue to face significant obstacles in breaking into the male-dominated genre space.

Garcia revealed that the share of female genre directors at Sitges has risen from 6% to around 30% since WomanInFan launched six years ago, though a documentary trailer she screened underscored that persistent barriers, including those faced by figures such as Katharina Kubrick, remain constant across generations. Guisa pointed to shared Spanish-Latin American cultural and religious imagery as fertile ground for genre storytelling, crediting Argentina and Ventana Sur's Blood Window programme with driving the region's growth, citing Demián Rugna's "When Evil Lurks" as the first Latin American film to win Sitges' best feature award, in 2023.