Over the last year and a half, few if any other major Latin American company has expanded as fast as Los Angeles-based MFF & Co.
Just last year alone, Brazil’s Maria Farinha Filmes opened L.A. offices, headed by former Participant Media exec Miura Kite. MFF & Co also took a stake in London’s Velvet Films, the four-time Academy Award-nominated production company founded by Oscar-winning filmmaker Joanna Natasegara (“White Helmets,” “Virunga”).
Last month, it unveiled that MFF & Co is partnering with Globo to develop English-language North American adaptations of the Brazilian TV giant’s smash hit telenovelas.
MFF & Co is hiring A-list writers to adapt three of 10 titles. MFF & Co founders Marcos Nisti and Renner are making soft adaptations of the others in order to be able to go out to producers, studios and streamers allowing them to co-develop.
That deal came fast on the heels of a deal announced during the Cannes Festival to co-develop “The Girl Who Could Fly,” partnering with Ashé Ventures, co-founded by Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony winner Viola Davis.
Other projects set up at MFF & Co include “Pegasus,” created by Amit Cohen (“False Flag”) and Ron Leshem (“Euphoria”) and produced by Maria Feldman (“Fauda”); “Fail-Safe,” directed by true crime pioneer Joe Berlinger (“Paradise Lost”) and “Esperanza,” to be helmed by Fernando Meirelles (“City of God”).
A new project involving a major international name Brazilian talent, looks set to be announced imminently. Why such as spectacular expansion?
MFF & Co is an impact entertainment company. When talking about it, writer-director-producer Estela Renner does not use the word “business” but “mission.”
That is fuelled by a sense of urgency. “We are united in this mission to build a vibrant ecosystem where ideas, culture, insight and artistic vision intersect because the urgency of our current moment is clear,” she says. “Stories have the power to feed our collective imagination. By expanding the kinds of imagination we share, rooted not only in urgency but also in care, resilience and creativity, we will help people envision futures worth striving for.”
This is not theory. Maria Farinha Filmes has a storied history. Written and directed by Renner, 2016’s “The Beginning of Life” was the most-watched documentary of the year in Brazil, distributed by Netflix in over 100 countries, launched at the U.N. and adopted by Unicef as its main tool for raising awareness of early childhood development.
On 2019’s “Aruanas,” MFF’s best known series created by Renner and Nisti for Globo’s VOD service Globoplay, MFF and Globo did themselves a Netflix, launching the Amazon-set eco-activist thriller in 150 countries worldwide using Vimeo-powered platform aruanas.tv.
What MFF & Co Brings to the Table
What MFF & Co brings to the table most are fresh takes on issues for a world which wants more than received wisdom.
“We operate by bringing new perspectives to connect and move culture forward,” notes Renner.
One case in point: one-hour doc “Brazil Before 1500.” It explains that the Amazon is not all forest but half man-made, much created by its indigenous population whose complex and large social organization – expansive roads, dams, canals, highly fertile soils, fish and turtles farms – are only now being discovered by archeologists and recognized. That makes the Amazon the biggest man-made monument on earth.
Written and directed by Renner, “The Beginning of Life” begins by debunking a myth. “Even philosophers, psychiatrists thought that babies were irrational, egocentric, amoral, didn’t understand cause and effect. They couldn’t take the perspective of anode person. In the past 30 years our science has taint us that everything is exactly the opposite,” says Alison Gopnik at California U, one of its well-chosen talking heads.
Inspiring fiction feature “The Girl Who Could Fly,” Brazil’s Daiane dos Santos, the first Brazilian and first Black woman to win gold at the World Artistic Gymnastics Championships, likewise “changed the way the sport perceived her body and the body of gymnasts. So instead of seeing this lightweight, delicate, ballet-like body, we saw Daiane dos Santos with explosion, with strength, and that changed the sport,” Renner enthuses.
“We have long believed that authentic and imaginative storytelling is a crucial tool for making the world better.”
People who believe that – like Renner, and Luana Lobo and Mariana Oliva, producer partners and co-CEOs of MFF & Co – are unlikely to balk when the closure of Participant Media freed up its former EVP of Global Television, Miura Kite, appointed President, Global Television of MFF & Co. Kite also served as Head of Development of Film and Television at Tom Hanks’ company, Playtone. She has bought with her several projects, her Participant television team, and a plethora of like-minded talent, artists, and executives who want to join the mission.
MFF & Co also tries to make shows that are attractive business propositions. Impact entertainment for MFF is essentially feel-good, “guided by the idea of stories that make life better,” says Oliva.
“Pegasus,” Renner promises, is about cyber security, human rights and a lack of regulation, but “has the narrative drive that distinguishes Cohen, Leshem and producer Maria Feldman.”
The company has a business savvy. “Every project has a different business model,” says Lobo. “We work through a methodology of collective intelligence, which is another decision-making process based on circles which facilitates the participation of more perspectives in decision-making,” she adds. That “diversity cognition” enables MFF & Co to finally take “bolder” decisions, she argues.
Jelling With The Zeitgeist
Above all, MFF & Co jells with the Zeitgeist.“We know audiences are hungry for rich content and we are excited to be bringing it to them,” Renner says.
“We do find people everywhere that have the same mission at heart,” she adds, name-checking Nathalie Perus at France’s Atlantique, a partner on “Pegasus,” and Thomas Anargyros at its parent company Mediawan Studio France.
She also cites, “of course,” Joanna Natasegara, producer of “Virunga,” about rangers risking their lives to save Democratic Republic of Congo national park gorillas.
Expect a next move announcement soon.
