Mexican horror festival Morbido and Chile’s Santiago Intl. Film Festival (Sanfic) have agreed on a long-term collaboration intended to strengthen the genre film industry in Chile and across Latin America.

This partnership will see Morbido representatives attend the Sanfic industry section each year to aid in the promotion of horror projects and advise those projects on their pitch processes, production design and budgets.

The fledgling Chilean genre industry will certainly benefit from the insights provided by Morbido founder and CEO Pablo Guisa, one of the hardest working of men in horror.

His impressive network includes an actual TV network available on pay TV in a number of Latin American territories, the Morbido Fest itself, theme park curation, collaborations with Cinepolis and Incaa – through Ventana Sur’s Blood Window sidebar – and he is a member of the Federation of European Fantastic Film Festivals.

Beyond insight, each year Morbido will choose from a non-specific number of projects participating in the Sanfic Industria pitches to back to the tune of 30% of the film’s proposed final budget. The sponsorship also assures the project a commercial premiere in Mexico, representation for international sales and programming on pay TV across Latin America through the Morbido TV network.

“This was my first visit to Sanfic, and as the director of a film festival I felt at home.,” Guisa told Variety while in Santiago. “I found an industry event loaded with potential attached to an international film festival which is strategically located, both geographically and in the time of year it’s held.”

He added, “The fact that South America is a talent pool for genre cinema and that when talking with Gabriela there was all the willingness and excitement to partner with us to strengthen support for genre cinema.”

The inaugural Sanfic winner of the Morbid Fest prize was Pilar Díaz, producer of Florencia Dupont’s “Aracne,”

The project was featured by Variety earlier this week, and stood out amongst a strong group of projects, a number of which possessed strong genre elements.

“Aracne” is a dark noir feature which turns on a young female journalist at a small Santiago newspaper in the ‘40s. With little to do while caring for her catatonic mother, Beatriz begins investigating Santiago’s corrupt underground. While working the case, she notices the erratic behavior of her neighbor who brings home young men nightly, alarmed that she never sees them leave.

Things go monstrously wrong when Beatriz and the woman from across the street set their eyes on the same man.

“’Aracne’ seemed a complete project to me with very particular aesthetic characteristics that I find personally attractive,” said Guisa. “It’s a very feminine, sensual and personal film from Florence. It has all of the characteristics a first genre film needs to position the director as an important new voice.”