Script-to-screen project development organisation DreamAgo began life four years ago in Switzerland and still holds its core event, an annual screenwriting workshop, in a chateau in the quiet town of Sierre, close to the Swiss borders with France and Italy.

But the non-profit group has always had an international mandate and now it is planning to expand its international reach through a series of events at festivals around the globe, beginning with last week's AFI Fest/AFM in Los Angeles.

The aim, explains DreamAgo president and general artistic director Pascale Rey, is to help participants make the connections necessary to turn their fully developed screenplays into films.

"We have projects from all over the world," says Rey, herself a Paris-based screenwriter and script doctor, "and they don't all need the same kind of production or co-production."

The DreamAgo process begins each May at Plume et Pellicule, the organisation's week-long screenwriting workshop in Switzerland. There, the writers of 10 projects, selected from around 100 submissions by DreamAgo's US and European reading panels, work with a group of expert consultants - US screenwriter Henry Bean (The Believer) and French writer-director-author Yves Lavandier (Oui, mais...) were part of the 2008 team - to hone their scripts.

The organisation looks for scripts with "a very personal voice and a universal story", says Rey, with the intention of developing "movies that make a difference". Forty projects from Europe, the US and Latin America have so far been workshopped and the first to have been produced, writer-director Marie Jaoul de Poncheville's Tengri: Blue Heavens, was selected as Kyrgyzstan's submission for this year's foreign-language film Oscar.

Projects that have gone through the workshop can then be submitted for DreamAgo's Meet Your Match programme, designed to introduce six selected scripts and their writers to potential producers, distributors and talent.

The first Meet Your Match event was a one-off at last year's AFI Fest. The meeting in Los Angeles this year, however, will be followed by similar get-togethers at the Berlin, Locarno and San Sebastian festivals.

"I decided we would do a real programme," Rey explains, "which means that with the projects we are accompanying through the process and introducing to producers we will be helping them the whole year."

DreamAgo's dealings with the US industry will be helped by the fact the organisation has always had a US presence, with South Africa-born theatre and film actress-director-producer Maggie Soboil serving as US co-ordinator since 2005.

More recently, DreamAgo arranged a first-look deal for its scripts with Pavaline Studios, the New York production operation headed by Marc Dahan.

Having a foothold in Hollywood, says Soboil, "was only natural, because there are so many writers and film-makers here. It's a good place to find producers and co-producers for our works."