Luisa Parnes Thomson

Luísa is a Latinx screenwriter from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, currently living in Los Angeles. After graduating Law School in Rio, Luisa pivoted into a career in Film and TV and never looked back. In 2010 she was accepted into NYU/Tisch, and in 2012 obtained her MFA in Dramatic Writing. Luísa’s journey since then has garnered the attention of producers and distributors. She served for two years as a Slate and Script Consultant for Amazon Studios Originals - Brazil. In this role, Luísa served as a story editor, working closely with multiple showrunners and creators, providing creative feedback during the development process. The first show she consulted on, September Mornings, premiered in August to huge critical success and was renewed for a second season. In 2020, Luisa completed writing Buena Vida, a fun and gritty coming-of-age feature for Academy-Award nominated director Carlos Saldanha (Ferdinand, Rio, Ice Age), and Fox International Productions (a Disney company). Production is scheduled for 2022. In 2019, Luísa wrote and directed her first short film, Learning to Ride. The short has, so far, been accepted into thirteen festivals, and has won Best Screenplay Award at the São Paulo Film Festival. The feature adaptation script was recently contemplated for the second round of the Sundance Screenwriter’s Lab. Luisa's first feature-film as a screenwriter, the Brazilian production Before I Forget ("Antes Que Eu Me Esqueça", 2018, dir. Tiago Arakilian, co-produced by Fox International), premiered in theaters across Brazil in the Spring of 2018, and ran in the international festival where it has since won multiple Juri and Audience awards to date. Prior, Luísa’s screenplay, Michaela, about an undocumented immigrant in Brazil who escapes life as a drug runner, placed in the top 15% of the Nicholl Fellowship, and won an Award of Merit from the Women's Independent Film Festival. Before moving to Los Angeles, Luisa taught Screenwriting at the New York Film Academy.