Nuestro Stories co-Founder Manny Ruiz, who will oversee the Nuestro Studios productions team, is the innovator who put the spotlight on the Latino social media and influencer marketing industries when he founded Hispanicize in 2010. “We innovated the Latino social media and influencer marketing industries with Hispanicize. Today we will apply that same tenacity and entrepreneurship to crack the code for Latinos in Hollywood,” Ruiz said. “In collaboration with like-minded filmmakers, actors, producers, and media companies, Nuestro Studios will help unleash the bottled-up dreams and great stories of countless Latino storytellers.”

Nuestro Studios marks a bold evolution from the Nuestro Stories platform with storytelling capabilities that now span premium branded content, original films, series, documentaries, and podcasts.

First Productions Slated

Nuestro Studios’ first slate of productions launches with three original films, Bistec: A Dissident’s Tale’ written by Ruiz tells a quirky cat-and-mouse story of Cuba’s most prominent dissident, and the Communist neighborhood snitch who’s sworn to stop him. The feature film, which includes an original audio series, will be scored by six-time Emmy-winning conductor Alberto Bade. Cuban filmmaker, writer, and documentarian Ernesto Fundora of Cuba Suena is on board as associate producer, and head of photography.

Also in production is the short film El Clavito which tells the dark tale of a young couple who make a strange compromise to buy their dream home for $1. El Clavito was co-written by the late Mel Santiesteban and Ruiz.

Ther podcast Fantastic Fails is on queue for production. The insightful and entertaining podcast will be devoted to showcasing entrepreneurs’ biggest business ideas that failed, and the lessons learned, is being hosted and co-executive produced by Jesse Martinez, founder of the Latinx Startup Alliance.

Nuestro Studios will produce both the five-part audio series for Bistec and the original serial podcast Fantastic Fails with the award-winning team of Studio Ochenta led by Lory Martinez.

The company’s expansion, Nuestro Studio has promoted the multi-hyphenated producer, and senior editor at Nuestro Stories, Efrain Gonzalez to partner and vice president of Nuestro Studios productions. Gonzalez’ signature talent is seen on many of Nuestro Stories’ current premium snackable documentaries online.

Nuestro Studios’ approach will initially lean on commercial-friendly content that can be packaged for the branding partnerships Nuestro Stories has cultivated. Nuestro Stories’ powerful capability in social media, adtech, influencers, and press release wire through Noticias Newswire, already affords the company substantial leverage to solve many of WOM and marketing-related hurdles Latino content platforms and producers typically face.

“We’re already on phase two, which is to ensure maximum amplification and views for the productions we’re creating or collaborating on,” said Gonzalez. “Aggressively solving for the distribution of content on streamers, online, and elsewhere is what we’re addressing for the marketplace and what excites us most.”

Despite Latinos representing 19% of the total U.S. population and being enthusiastic moviegoers, their presence on the big screen remains disproportionately low (Hollywood Diversity Report 2023) with leads predominantly White in 66.7% of films on streaming platforms. Latinos were represented in only 6.1% of these roles. Nuestro Studios was created with these stats in mind, and hope to positively help raise the percentages with their content dedicated to the U.S. Latino audience.

Nuestro Stories is the flagship brand of the diverse-owned Brilla Media Ventures. Nuestro Stories produces snackable videos, stories, and social media content daily focused on Latino origins and histories, and through its Nuestro Studios will also now create branded and original films, documentaries, series, and podcasts. Nuestro Stories is led by Angela Sustaita-Ruiz and Manny Ruiz, creators of Hispanicize.

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McDonald’s has partnered with Nuestro Stories, the nation’s only media platform devoted to Latino origins and histories, to launch a special Spotlight Dorado micro-digital documentary on The Latino Origins of Batman.

The short form doc and multi-media content focuses on the remarkable origin story of Batman, who traces back to the first Latino superhero Zorro, and who in turn was inspired by the real-life exploits of Mexican American, Joaquin Murrieta (1829 –1853).

Spotlight Dorado is a new multi-year platform aimed at uplifting Latino talent and arming them with access to mentorship and coveted resources to change their career trajectories and put them steps closer to making their cinematic dreams come true. The program includes a short film contest alongside acclaimed actress, director, producer and representation advocate Stephanie Beatriz.

Ten semi-finalists were selected on July 18, and three finalists will be chosen by August 8. The finalists will have their screenplays produced into a short film with mentorship from some of the most influential Latino voices in the industry. The films will debut on Spotlight Dorado later this year, and the winner will be decided by popular vote.

Even though Latinos represent nearly 20% of the U.S. population, their stories make up less than 1% of those told by Hollywood.^[1] Without mentorship, connections, and financial support, many Latino filmmakers struggle to produce films.

In the spirit of Spotlight Dorado, the digital and social media content was produced by the Latina-owned Brilla Media, which is the parent company of Nuestro Stories. Every facet of the storytelling, from script to directing, editing, and research, were produced by team of Latinos with Mexican-American, Cuban American, Puerto Rican, Colombian-American, and Venezuelan-American descent. This is the first part of a content series McDonald’s is producing with Nuestro Stories.

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