Yahoo Lifestyle Fondosa Foundation, Projeto Paradiso Launch Argentine-Brazilian Women Scriptwriter Initiative (EXCLUSIVE)
Argentina’s newly created Fondosa Foundation, launched by lawyer-producer Virginia Juárez, is teaming with Brazilian philanthropic org Projeto Paradiso, a mover and shaker on Brazil’s young talent scene, to launch a new program aimed at providing world-class mentorship to women screenwriters.
The program will back the development of one screenplay from Brazil and another from Argentina. The program aims to enrol as screenplay mentors some of Argentina’s foremost writers or writer-directors. Lucrecia Martel, one of the world’s great filmmakers (“The Swamp,” “The Holy Girl,” “The Headless Woman,” “Zama” ), looks set to become the program’s first mentor.
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The Fondosa Foundation’s call for applications looks set to run next February with the two winning screenwriters announced May 2025 and the mentorship initiating in June.
The mentorship is being announced at a Ventana Sur round table focusing on Gender Perspective Initiatives. The partnership with Projeto Paradiso is the first public announcement made by the Fondosa Foundation since its launch in March 2024.
“The principal mission of the Fondosa Foundation is to support Argentine women screenwriters with a lack of opportunities,” Juárez told Variety. This is an era of solipsism. “Valuing altruism will generate a positive impact on a collective and community level,” she added.
“We are are very happy to be a partner at the first call of Fundación Fondosa,” said Projeto Paradiso Program Director Rachel do Valle. “For Projeto Paradiso it’s amazing to see other philantropic organizations offering opportunities for talents in Latin America and we are glad to work with Virginia Juarez.” “Project development is our main focus and it’s great to work again with Lucrecia Martel as a screenwriting consultant, the first time we did was with Incubadora Paradiso, our fiction film development program and it was fantastic,” she added.
Júarez recently founded the publishing house Torre de Marfil alongside the Fondosa Foundation, in a strategic alliance with “UMa Films,” a holding company of cultural businesses based in Córdoba, Argentina, and its European branch Hispánica Audiovisual, located in Madrid.
More to come….
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