Belladonna Commercials is a New York-based commercial production company that sources directors for domestic and international advertising agencies worldwide. The company's principals, René Bastian and Fabiana Lutti, have a long record of international success in both commercials and film.

With their intimate knowledge of the European, Latin American, and North American production markets comes a deep set of international agency contacts and relationships with top directors from around the world. "We saw an opportunity to create the first boutique production business that operates in a truly global way," says Belladonna's Lutti. "There was no effective process in place to match a storyboard's unique creative vision with the best-suited director. That director may be from a different part of the world, and the most appropriate and cost-effective place of execution may be some place else altogether."

Belladonna's philosophy is very much geared toward an open production system. "We have formed partnerships with the leading production houses in Europe, South America, Asia and Australia to promote an open exchange of talent between our partners," Bastian says. "This enables us to offer our clients the best possible execution of their commercials. Often, if a foreign director is not represented by a US production company, he will never appear on an agency's radar, even though he might be the perfect match for a given project. We are here to change that."

Belladonna works differently from most other production companies. Rather than having agencies send storyboards intended for a particular director, Lutti and Bastian scout and source the most appropriate director from their personal networks for each individual project. They also bring a worldwide perspective to scouting ideal locations, also on a situation-by-situation basis. Often, Belladonna will introduce a variety of top directors that an agency would likely not have seen before, together with solutions to produce the ad in the most cost-effective and creatively fitting manner possible.