The Cortez Brothers, Inc., a multicultural production company based in Marina del Rey, has added three directors to its roster: Cassiano Prado and Jerome Kruin for general market and Hispanic work in the U.S., both for agencies and direct to client; and Michal Sabliński for general market fare. Sablinski is handled by Miami-based In and Out Productions for U.S. Hispanic assignments.
Prado comes over from Stink, which continues to rep him outside the U.S. He is a writer/director from São Paulo. After studying acting and screenwriting at London’s Central School of Speech & Drama and Britain’s National Film & Television School, he launched his career directing music videos and sports-related commercials featuring football stars from around the world. His reel includes films for Gatorade, Asics, FIFA and the Expo 2020 in Dubai.
Kruin is a Canadian-based director whose stylish work in music videos led to commercial assignments around the world, and his show reel reflects it, with spots for Infiniti, Nike, Mercedes-Benz, Harley-Davidson, Under Armour, NYX Cosmetics and many other brands. He signs with Cortez after a lengthy career as a freelance director, working for top production houses in Latin America, Asia and Europe. He’s represented in his native Canada by Someplace Nice.
Sabliński, a highly versatile Polish filmmaker, has a body of work that includes cinematic, visual storytelling with an emotional or comic bent for brands like McDonald’s, Danone, Huawei, Canal+, General Electric and Harnaś. He is repped in Europe by Papaya while the aforementioned In and Out also handles him in Mexico.
Cortez Brothers’ president Bernadette Rivero, aka B.B., who’s partnered in the company with managing director Ed Rivero, said that Prado “imbues a big, epic, cinematic sense of scope into everything from vignettes to classic, three-act storytelling, and weaves in these small touches of humanity that anchor it all in real life. Every piece makes you feel like you’re going on a journey, so there’s an escapist quality that’s easy to get lost in as a viewer.”
Ed Rivero shared that director Kruin “has an elevated, sleek body of work that carries across both vehicles and bodies in motion. There’s power, torque and grace to his direction, which shows in his work with cars and athletes, even in fashion. He’s skilled with capturing unexpected flares of light and shadow, reflections, sheet metal and perspiration on skin.”
B.B. described Sabliński as “simply entertaining. His body of work will hit you with these emotional punches out of nowhere, where you think you’re watching a lighthearted story and then BAM, here comes a fleeting moment of vulnerability or pathos. He can spin a piece around in a second, which is one of those priceless qualities that, when combined with his gorgeously-lit photography, takes you on a rollercoaster.”
While Prado, Kruin and Sabliński all hail from different parts of the world, they reflect the Cortez ethos of presenting unique voices with left-of-center POVs, all of whom have highly inventive ways of seeing the world through an unexpected lens.
“We live, work and take inspiration in the diverse world of underrepresented talent,” offered B.B. “That means we’re constantly looking for, identifying and mentoring filmmakers who are not always visible if you’re only looking in mainstream places.”
Ed Rivero added, “When it comes to diverse talent, there’s a tendency to only get submitted for Black History Month or Hispanic Heritage Month jobs, LGBTQ stories or indigenous ones, and then get shelved the other 300-something days of the year. That’s why we spend a lot of time helping our directors, at every stage of their career, steer around those issues so they can flourish over the long term.”
Cortez Brothers is represented on the West Coast by Devine Reps, in the Midwest by Beeline Reps, on the East Coast by Daria Zeliger, in Texas and the Southeast by Ann Asprodites and for the Hispanic market by Bettina Abascal.
