projects
Fantastic girls don't talk
Documentary | short film
Itinerary: Virna Paz
Directed by: Virna Paz and Diego Akel
THE FANTASTIC GIRLS DON'T TALK will show how a Sunday television show influenced Virna's family, on the eve of her turning 15. She is a teenager from the Northeast, black and fat, who grew up feeling inadequate and believing in a unique standard of female beauty: a thin, white woman from the South/Southeast of Brazil. Fantastic Girl was definitely not Virna, but there was a small chance she might try to be. This chance is the device of the documentary that investigates fat bodies, the 90s, beauty standards and mass media.
Fortaleza - Ceará - Brazil
2025
fat
Documentary | short film
Script and Direction: Virna Paz
GORDAS is the meeting of a child, a teenager and an adult woman. They are one person, who now delves into their own archive images from the 80s and 90s to look at a trauma founded on mistaken beliefs and knowledge about the body, beauty and health. His mother and a beach are also characters, to make up this group connected by the passage of years and by the small and large violence attributed to women and nature. The film shows disagreements and reunions, and the entire way back is made of sea water.
Fortaleza - Ceará - Brazil
2025
large circular
Documentary | short film
Script and Direction: Diego Akel
The animation GRANDE CIRCULAR, by Diego Akel, brings together sound and visual textures of everyday life in the Fortaleza neighborhoods of Damas, Jacarecanga, Pirambu, Centro, Cidade 2000 and Vicente Pinzon, capturing everyday life through sketches, studies, details, small observations and nuances of life of people and places. Contrary to iconic images, tourist and highlighted points, the short film investigates the small, the invisible, the unknown and the forgotten architectural, natural or human element of the city.
Fortaleza - Ceará - Brazil
2024
international animation show of fortress
Film Show
Curator: Diego Akel | Executive Producer: Virna Paz
The first edition will bring together workshops, masterclasses and screenings of short animation films from Ceará, Brazil and different parts of the world. The Exhibition will focus on national and international animated film productions, which value manual and pictorial processes. We will highlight differentiated content and experimental approaches, with notoriously artisanal techniques such as drawing and painting on paper, stop motion with different objects and materials, and also 2D and 3D Digital films, as long as the craftsmanship of their production is evident in the final result.
Fortaleza - Ceará - Brazil
2025
their years
Documentary | series
General Management: Virna Paz
Episode script and direction: Virna Paz, Verônica Guedes, Rúbia Mércia, Priscila Smiths, Noá Bonoba, Michelline Helena, Magi do Carmo and Irene Bandeira
"O Ano Delas" is a documentary series in eight episodes, which proposes an initial device: each episode will be directed by a different director from Fortaleza/CE, who will choose an important year in her life (regardless of whether it is childhood, adolescence, of youth, adulthood or aging) and will choose a story that happened in this specific year, to tell in a first-person documentary format. The documentary series is made up of female self-narratives, from women of different races, ages, territories and life stories.
Fortaleza - Ceará - Brazil
2025
XD-11
Documentary | short film
Script and Direction: Virna Paz
[Diary of a baby's mother]: “The first of December, nineteen seventy-eight. This is the photo of my first plane trip to Rio de Janeiro for the weekend and then to São Paulo for a week. The trip was great! I was a hit with the crew and some passengers really praised my beautiful eyes - mom and dad couldn't contain themselves with so much pride.”
Fortaleza - Ceará - Brazil
2024