This Visionary Philanthropist Is Financing Brazil’s Burgeoning Talent

Back in 2018, Brazilian philanthropist Olga Rabinovich sat her team down and gave them a mission: to find the most effective way to nurture a cause in dire need of effective financial support in her home country. After a year of research, Olga found her answer in the film industry, launching the Olga Rabinovich Institute the same year and Projeto Paradiso a year later.  

Projeto Paradiso offers a wide range of support to Brazilian screen professionals to maximize their presence on the global stage. The organization is heavily focused on internationalization, working with partners to connect national talent with opportunities worldwide and offering bursaries, training opportunities and carefully curated resources. The initiative was recently behind buzzy festival titles such as Allan Deberton’s Berlinale-winning “Gugu’s World” and Grace Passô’s “Our Secret,” and boasts a talent network of 264 professionals, including Anita Rocha da Silveira (“Medusa”), Juliana Rojas (“Good Manners”) and Dira Paes (“Manas”).

The work of Projeto Paradiso is almost unprecedented in terms of scope and ease of bureaucracy. Given that Rabinovich is the single source of funding and operates without admin-heavy regulatory bodies, the institute has a surprising malleability and agility in how it can support talent. As Projeto Paradiso celebrates its third talent network national meeting in Recife, Variety sat down with Rabinovich and associate Roberta de Oliveira e Corvo to talk about the origins of the institute, its differentials and how one woman is singlehandedly changing the present and future of Brazilian cinema. 

“I have been so immensely privileged in my life and have always been very aware of this privilege and my luck,” says Rabinovich. “One day, I sat down with my long-time lawyer and friend, Roberta, and told her that I wanted to give back somehow. I’ve had wonderful opportunities in life, and I felt like I wanted to enable others to have similar chances.”

When Rabinovich first heard of the issues plaguing the Brazilian film industry, she immediately felt she had found her cause. “I loved the idea of supporting cinema because I feel it is a magical art form,” she says. “You enter a screening room without knowing whether you’ll be elated or disturbed or moved. It’s a transformative experience. I think it’s incredible to have a communal artistic experience that moves you like this. I was immediately onboard.”

After a lengthy research, the institute’s team realized there was a lack of investment in development despite the country boasting healthy incentives and public funding systems. “It was unanimous at that time that the national film industry was not struggling with production per se, because there was a structure in place that was nurturing that side of the market,” adds Corvo. “What we learned is that Brazilian filmmakers had no time to mature their scripts because they needed to make a living while trying to conduct this creative work. That’s when we first came up with the idea of the incubator.”

The incubator became Projeto Paradiso’s first initiative, despite the organization not having been formally named at the time. “Then came Bolsonaro, and we became a much bigger initiative, supporting a much wider network,” recalls Rabinovich. “Bolsonaro wanted to destroy culture altogether. I put my foot down and said: No. We won’t let that happen. Let’s see what we can do.”

When under Bolsonaro funding for Brazil’s national film agency Ancine and other initiatives plunged, Rabinovich stepped up to help Brazilian filmmakers cover travel costs to attend major international festivals. This quick thinking and even quicker action became ingrained in the institute’s ethos. Walking around Recife’s Cais do Sertão, where the Projeto Paradiso Talent Network National Meeting is currently taking place, one could hear producers, directors and writers praising how effective the program is. A producer participating producer said it took less than a week between the Paradiso team confirming they would grant her a travel bursary to a European festival and the money landing in her bank account. “I have been a producer for over two decades and have never seen anything like it.” This feeling was echoed by several other attendees.

Enquired as to how they can operate this efficiently, Corvo says the answer is “simple and frankly quite sad.” “We are dealing with private funds, managed by a single entity. We don’t need to have a long compliance process for every single decision. We have a fiscal board that oversees our work, but we waste very little time in making things happen. If one of our team members comes to us and tells us that someone got selected for a program and they need to jump on the chance right away, we make it happen quickly. We have direct channels between us and talent.”

It also helps that the institute is dealing with relatively small grants, a decision that was made very early on in the company’s establishment. “We opted to offer several smaller grants that could have a meaningful impact on a person and their project instead of only being able to provide one or two massively inflated grants,” adds Corvo.

“I remember the day Josephine [Bourgois, Projeto Paradiso’s executive director] told us about the idea of ‘final cash,’ which is the last bit of money a filmmaker needs to finalize their project. This is often the equivalent of $3,000, but it can make or break a project. Suddenly, the institute can come in and make that happen very quickly. We had people coming to us in tears, sending us long letters… It’s incredible to see the impact of a grant like it.”

Rabinovich is almost like a rock star at the talent network gathering, often being stopped by grateful grantees in the labyrinthine corridors of Cais do Sertão. The warmth she feels at the event makes the philanthropist visibly emotional. “It is such an immense honor and an almost overwhelming feeling of satisfaction,” she says. “I can’t quite believe I have started something that felt so small at the time and that has grown to such success. It is very moving but also feels like a huge responsibility. I’m just grateful we can make it happen.”

As for the future, Rabinovich says she is steadfast in making her charitable work a long-term initiative. “We had a meeting when Projeto Paradiso turned five to think about the next five years and what our priorities were when it came to professionalization,” she recalls. “We wanted to have everything in place to ensure that this is an initiative that can be perpetuated. I don’t want this to have an expiration date. I would love for it to work in perpetuity, and I fully believe we will make it happen.”