Viola Davis' Ashé Ventures Boards Maria Farinha Filmes' Biopic of Trailblazing Black Gymnast Daiane dos Santos (EXCLUSIVE)
Ashé Ventures, co-founded by Viola Davis, an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony winner, has joined forces with Brazil's Maria Farinha Filmes to co-produce 'The Girl Who Could Fly.'
The partnership marks the latest expansive move by the fast-growing Maria Farinha Filmes. In 2024, it launched the Los Angles-based MFF & Co, which in turn acquired a minority stake in London's four-time Oscar-nominated Violet Films.
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Projects set up at MFF & Co include 'Pegasus,' created by Amit Cohen ('False Flag') and Ron Leshem ('Euphoria'), 'Fail-Safe,' directed by Joe Berlinger ('Paradise Lost'), and 'Esperanza,' from Fernando Meirelles ('City of God').
A fiction feature, 'Girl' is inspired by the life and groundbreaking journey of Brazil's Daiane dos Santos, the first Brazilian and first Black woman to win gold at the World Artistic Gymnastics Championships.
The best tumbler of her generation, Dos Santos was the first female gymnast to perform either involving double Arabians: Half twists into double front flips. Dos Santos had two floor exercise skills named after her — the 'Dos Santos I' and 'Dos Santos II' — a distinction later matched only by U.S. gymnast Simone Biles.
'The Girl Who Could Fly' will explore the powerful story of a young Black girl who broke racial and societal barriers to become a global gymnastics icon' through her 'defiance of the physical, mental and aesthetic expectations of her time,' Maria Farinha Filmes announced Wednesday.
In advanced development, 'Girl' is written by Flávia Vieira ('These Are the Rules,' the 'If My Memory Serves Me Right' podcast) and Janaína Tokitaka ('Mila in the Multiverse,' 'Back to 15').
'We always envisioned that this project had what it takes to capture the world's imagination, and it's a happy encounter to have Ashé sharing this vision with us in this historic Brazilian co-production,' said Luana Lobo, co-CEO and partner at Maria Farinha Filmes.
'We are in a very special moment for Brazil, in which audiences want new heroes. We have the opportunity to make this project a great local case, but above all, a global one,' added Maurício Mota, a co-producer and partner at Ashé Ventures.
A leading global impact entertainment company in Latin America, the 17-year-old Maria Farinha Filmes broke out to worldwide attention producing Amazon-set thriller 'Aruanas' for Globo's VOD service Globoplay, which went on to be seen by 35 million viewers per episode. Launched on Netflix, doc franchise 'The Beginning of Life,' focused on the importance of early childhood development, was the most watched Brazilian documentary of 2016.
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Every time we put a piece of dance into Étoile, it needs to push the narrative forward or it needs to say something about the story. We didn't want to be just a show that stopped for a pretty ballet. So if you're going to see a Tobias ballet, Gideon Glick's character, the ballet had to say something about what Tobias was going through or what he was pushing or what his style was, which tells you who he is as a character. So it's not enough just to do a cool ballet. Marguerite had to step back and think, what motions feed Tobias's brain? What rhythms are in his head? He's a guy who has his headphones on, so he's actually listening to music other than the music that is in his head that he's choreographing to. So what is that madness all about? And so what comes out as these really great, cool ballets, the thought process that went into them was actually much more intense than 'Let's do something with tutus.' Even the phone call in the pilot, which is the union guy talking to Genevieve as they're in the phone negotiating whether they're going to go and strike or not, we needed to see something in the background of what they were going to lose of who these dancers were, of what they were striking for, of what the point of this was. So we needed something that was motion and the dancers could come on and off and on and off and be part of it because it was about their story. So even the smallest little piece of dance, the discussions were quite elaborate just in terms of what was the story it was feeding into. Marguerite, how did you weave your dance into the story? Derricks: Amy and Dan, they put it all in the script. For a choreographer, I've been doing this for a million years, and usually it says, 'And they dance.' There's nothing there, and they dance because people don't know what they want. They don't know how important dance is and how it can drive the story forward. 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And we did it and it was fine, but none of us were really, really happy with it. Our time was ticking, and we were coming to the end of our shoot. And Marguerite and I looked at each other and it's like, we need something else. We're telling people how great Cheyenne is. We've seen Romeo and Juliet, but that was really from Jack's point of view and how he viewed her. We need the audience to meet Cheyenne the dancer. And I threw her 'Big in Japan,' this Tom Waits song that's been in my head, in a hot second and she came up with this thing. I don't know if it was even overnight that she came up with this dance that tells you everything you need to know about Cheyenne, a woman who can't channel her emotions or frustrations in any other way but dance. The other dance we could have left in, and it would have been fine. But there was something about this moment that elevated this character so that you got her completely, and that was me throwing her a piece of music at the last minute and saying, 'What do think about this?' And Constance came in, who's Cheyenne's dance double, and she killed it. I said to McConkey, 'Strap on your Steadicam, let's go.' Marguerite and I dragged him around the room and we got that thing in record time, and it's exactly what we needed. Marguerite, how much of Tobias is based on you? Derricks: We became one! Gideon and I became one. Even reading Tobias, I auditioned eight pillows when I moved to New York for [Étoile]. All of his quirkiness, I just connected with. Gideon would come to rehearsals and he would stalk me and I would stalk him. So I always tell Gideon that we literally became one on the show. For me, Tobias is my biggest voice in the show. It's where I really got to strut my stuff and do something different with ballet that I've been wanting to do for a long time. Sherman-Palladino: 100 percent. It was the hardest thing to do because you're creating a character through dance. Because Tobias is all about the dance. He can't talk at all. He's the worst people person on the face of the earth. Maybe even worse than Cheyenne. So his whole vocabulary is dance. So if the dance didn't fit who we were trying to tell the audience he was, the character wouldn't have resonated at all. Watch our other recent Dream Team stories featuring Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino, plus the two creators with star and cinematographer . This article and video are presented by Prime Video. 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