Co-production and licensing, A Saga de Toninho Sagatiba

Press material

The package holds the poster, high resolution stills, the technical sheet, the synopses, the method statement and the full credits. Access to the screener goes with it, once the screener is issued.

Poster in high resolution, in the vertical, horizontal and square crops
Sixteen press stills in high resolution, with caption and credit
Full technical sheet, in Portuguese and in English
Method and transparency statement, ready for a submission form
Logline, short synopsis and long synopsis, in both languages

Full method statement

The package exists and it is assembled. It does not have a public address on this page yet, and that is why this page offers no button that downloads nothing: until the address is published here, the production sends the package out on request.

Technical sheet

Title: A Saga de Toninho Sagatiba
Format: Series pilot. Mockumentary built out of testimony.
Genre: Dramatic comedy. Brazilian neighborhood legend.
Duration: 7min46 for the cut, which runs 466.541667 seconds and 11,197 frames. 8min45 for the copy with end credits and the transparency card, which runs 524.917667 seconds. The duration you declare is the duration of the copy you deliver.
Year: 2026.
Country: Brazil.
Language: Brazilian Portuguese.
Picture: 3840x2160, 24 frames per second, 16:9, color.
Sound: Stereo 2.0, 48 kHz.
Voice cast: One actor, eleven voices. Ten interviewees and one figure who speaks without giving testimony.
Production company: Pichorra Filmes, São Paulo, with ANCINE registration.
Screen credit: Balba Bossa, an arm of Pichorra Filmes.
Created, written and directed by: Ulisses Balbino.
Editing, sound design and finishing: Ulisses Balbino, in ffmpeg.
Voices: All by Ulisses Balbino, with documented consent. No third party voice was cloned.
Expected rating: 14 years, under the Brazilian classification system.
Release situation: The work has not been commercially exploited and has not been published on an open platform.
Production note: The pilot was produced entirely with generative artificial intelligence tools. No interviewee reproduces a real person. Material presented as period archive is in part public domain documentary footage, identified as such, and in part generated reconstruction, which is not a historical record. Script, direction, shot breakdown, editing and sound design are human. The full list of tools is in the method statement.

Season

First season: 8 episodes of 26 minutes, with ten interviewees, six of them already in the pilot.
Structure: One host and one new arrival per episode. Self contained episodes, with an accumulating arc underneath.
Design: Five seasons mapped, with no ceiling on the design.
Schedule: Twelve months of production for the first season.
Primary window: National premium streaming, full season, adult late night slot.
State of the material: Pilot produced, not finished. Series bible and series presentation written. Season 1 map and the outlines of the eight episodes written.

The engine of the series

Why this is a series and not a short.

Toninho does not exist. The testimonies exist. That is not a poetic thesis, it is a production structure. A conventional series needs a protagonist who learns, changes and arrives somewhere. This one only needs one more person who remembers.

Each new person who sits down does not bring a new facet of Toninho, they bring an entire life, with a beginning, a middle and a disappearance of its own, and that life does not have to agree with any of the ones before it. A film would have to choose a version: in ninety minutes you either hand Toninho over or you cheat the audience. The series does the opposite, it turns the withholding into a ritual. It is the difference between a question and a table at a bar. The question ends, the table does not.

That is why the format feeds itself: as long as there is somebody who swears they knew Toninho, there is an episode, and the next season does not depend on the one before it. The accumulation never cancels anything out. Five seasons are mapped and the design has no ceiling, because it does not depend on resolving a single thing.

Co-production

What is open.

A Saga de Toninho Sagatiba is a dramatic comedy in mockumentary form about a legend of the Zona Norte of São Paulo. Toninho walked down the hill and never came back. The people who stayed give their testimony in a bar, a church, a square and a front room, and no two versions match. To the neighbor at gate 43, a deadbeat. To his music partner, the composer of an entire repertoire that is now in another man's hands. To the old Ukrainian from the pastry shop, an interpreter who traveled on business for people from consulates.

The pilot is produced, in 4K, with end credits and a transparency card on the use of artificial intelligence already applied and subtitling underway, and it reconstructs the graphic standard of Brazilian television of the 1970s, with period titling and archive passages. The first season is designed as eight episodes of twenty six minutes with ten interviewees, six of them already in the pilot. One host per episode, self contained episodes with accumulation underneath. Produced by Balba Bossa, São Paulo, created by Ulisses Balbino.

Co-production of the first season
Licensing of the pilot and the season for streaming and television
A development commission, with bible and scripts
A market meeting, by appointment

The chain of title dossier, with the commercial license of every tool, documented consent for the voices and ownership of the script and of the generated material in the name of the production company, is ready and goes out at the start of any contract conversation.

Talking to the production

Ulisses Balbino

Creator, writer and director, Balba Bossa

City: São Paulo, Brazil

The production's contact address has not been published on this page yet. That is why there is no submission form here: a form that collects an acquisition message and then throws it away is worse than no form at all. As soon as the address is published, it appears in the block above, as a real address, clickable.