The film that sells a graduate program by talking to the mother: Uningá's script for Latin America

"Este posgrado es el mejor de Odonto que vi, má." The line comes from a young man holding his arm out with his phone's front camera on. His mother's face appears on the small screen. He studies far from home and has just arrived at the place where he will do his graduate program, so he does what every son does in a new place: he calls her and shows her everything. That is the starting point of the film I wrote for Uningá, a Spanish-language film for students from Latin America and for the mothers and fathers who make the decision with them. I open this series with it, a series about the path a script travels until it becomes images in the hands of REC Mart.

Uningá: the university center in Maringá that speaks Spanish to Latin America

Uningá was born in Maringá on April 10, 1996, under the name Associação Maringaense de Ensino Superior. Three years later, the Ministry of Education accredited Faculdade Ingá. In 2016 the institution became a university center, and in 2017 it was accredited for distance learning. Today the campus sits along highway PR 317, on property the institution owns, and houses Dentistry, Psychology, Speech Therapy, Physical Therapy and Nutrition clinics used for internships and community care.

In August 2025, according to the self-assessment report sent to the Ministry of Education (MEC), 31,806 students were enrolled in undergraduate programs, 4,109 on campus and 27,697 in distance learning. Uningá holds an Institutional Grade of 5 from MEC and a Professional Master's in Dentistry approved by Capes.

The part that matters most for this film is on the Spanish-language pages of the official Uningá website. There the institution offers specializations designed for professionals from other countries, such as Armonización Orofacial para Extranjeros, with 21 months, 1,400 hours and 20 seats per class, as well as Implantología and Ortodoncia para Extranjeros. In January 2025, according to the website itself, twelve professionals from Peru, Mexico, Honduras and Paraguay began the graduate program in Orofacial Harmonization on campus.

Choosing a graduate program abroad is a decision made at the family table

Picture a newly graduated dentist in Lima or Asunción who is thinking about specializing in Brazil. Before enrollment comes a change of country, language, food and routine. That conversation happens in the family kitchen, with the mother asking where he will live, who will take care of him if he gets sick, whether the city is safe, whether he will eat well. Any film that intends to speak to this student also needs to answer these questions.

The script started there. The decision belongs to the student and to the family at the same time, and a corporate film that speaks to both sides gains enormous strength. The project's visual guide records this choice in a sentence I fully endorse: "The relationship between student and mother humanizes the message and strengthens the emotional bond with the audience, without looking like a caricatured advertisement."

Writing for the mother calls for particular care with tone. She wants to see the lab, and above all she wants to see her son's face while he shows her the lab. She wants to hear in his voice that everything is fine. The academic facilities enter the film as an answer to this motherly concern, and each space on campus begins to say, silently, that someone has thought about the well-being of those who come from far away.

A corporate video script shaped as a video call

The film runs about four minutes and opens on the phone's front camera, with the mother on screen. I chose this framing because it belongs to the audience's life. Every student who lives far from home knows this image by heart: the outstretched arm, the face seen slightly from below, the voice of someone who wants to show something beautiful to a person they love. When the film opens in this format, viewers recognize their own routine and let their guard down.

From the phone screen, the image cuts to the drone, which reveals the entire campus. From there, the student walks through labs, the surgical center, auditoriums, the library, the restaurant and the gym, always talking to his mother. Each space gets a short on-screen text in Spanish. Then the tour leaves campus and reaches the city: the Cathedral, Parque do Ingá, the bike paths, the cafés. Maringá appears as the student's new home.

In one of his lines, the young man says: "Es acá donde voy a hacer mi posgrado de odontología. Ya me estoy sintiendo en casa..." This way the facilities tour takes the shape of a son reassuring his mother. The film ends under a tree, with an emotional moment and a heartfelt twist that I am saving for the next article, and with a chance encounter with another Latin American student, also on the phone with his family. The drone pulls away and the tagline appears: "UNINGÁ. TENEMOS UN LUGAR PARA QUE CREZCAS AQUÍ."

A Spanish-language video for Latin America: moving people in another language

The first version of the script was written in Portuguese. The Spanish version came later, with adjustments that only show up when the text starts living in the mouths of another people. The student was given a specialty, Dentistry, in line with what the institution actually offers. The mother came to be called "má", as people say in the intimacy of so many Latin American homes. The direction of the actors followed Rioplatense Spanish, with "vos" and affectionate expressions from Argentina, and the directing guide broke the script into six shots, with gesture and vocal pacing instructions for each one.

Moving people in another language requires listening to how they talk to those they love. Emotion lives in the nickname, in the diminutive, in the way someone greets their mother on the phone. That is why the Spanish script was worked on sentence by sentence, with attention to what a mother hopes to hear from a son who is on the other side of the border.

Script approved on the first round: the text REC Mart turned into a film

The script was approved on the first round. Before the film was finished, I got feedback from people who read the text while it was still on paper. For a scriptwriter, this is a precious gauge. When the reading already moves people, the production team gains a solid foundation for working light, camera and acting toward the same emotion.

That foundation ended up in very good hands. I met REC Mart through a referral from two friends in the field, Terra and Talita, and I was welcomed with such warmth that within a few days I was already part of the team, learning the stories of the brands and the people. To Ton Dijan, founder of the production company, I owe the trust of opening the doors to other projects after the first piece was approved on the first round. The REC team loves scripts, followed the thread of the message and brought to the images the delicacy the text called for.

The final delivery came out in Spanish and in Portuguese, in horizontal and vertical versions, ready for the screens where this audience spends the day. The film's tagline lived on after it and gave its name to an entire campaign for Latin America, a subject I cover later in the series. The full account of the partnership is in the Uningá section of the REC Mart case study, and the institution's day-to-day life appears on Uningá's official Instagram.

In the next article about Uningá, I explain why the best seasoning in the world closed this corporate film and how a simple question between two students turned one student's story into the story of an entire community.