Oscar-nominated Danish documentary producer Sigrid Dyekjær, who set up her new company Real Lava in 2021, is spending the next few months in Los Angeles where she is overseeing the US launch of Alex Pritz’s The Territory in more than 100 cities.
National Geographic Films and Picturehouse are handling the release of the film which won both the Audience Award and Special Jury Award for Documentary Craft at Sundance 2022, and is shaping up as one of this year’s documentary blockbusters. Released in the UK through Dogwoof, the film is expected to be in the running for the Oscars.
The Territory (also produced by Darren Aronofsky) is the first feature by cinematographer turned director Pritz and concerns the fight by the Indigenous Uru-eu-wau-wau people of Brazil to protect their land. The film is also the first project made through Real Lava, the ambitious new documentary outfit set up last year by Dyekjaer and now owned by French media conglomerate, Newen Studios.
“I actually wasn’t that interested in doing another film about the Amazon, right. There have been made quite a lot of films about the Amazon. I am much more into stories where it is character-driven…very complex, where there are nuances,” Dyekjær explains why she became involved. She tends to be “more interested” in the “people inside the material” than the big headline political issues. In this case, though, Alex Pritz had built up such a strong relationship with the Uru-eu-wau-wau people that “we were able to know the characters in a much deeper way than we would normally do.”
Dyekjær knows the documentary world inside out. “I am a producer with 22 years of experience and I’ve done over 30 films,” she states her credentials. She is not trying to boast. Her point is that she understands exactly what it takes to get different types of films financed and shot. She’ll never embark on a film just because a well-known name (like, say, Aronofksy) is already involved. For her, the directors and the material are always the main factors. In this case, she was immediately impressed by Pritz even if he was a first-time filmmaker. She could see he was hard-working, collaborative and respectful toward his colleagues.
“I did not want to produce an NGO film,” Dyekjær adds. She knew that Pritz would try to engage audiences rather than preach at them. “Like The Cave [Oscar-nominated in 2020] which I also produced, yeah, it took place in Syria but we weren’t dwelling on the Syrian war. We were portraying a woman who ran a hospital under the ground,” she says of the way that her films emphasise the human factor.
The Danish producer has some outspoken opinions about the state of documentary in her homeland. She believes that the Danes have become too parochial in the stories they are trying to tell. Dyekjær makes documentaries for the big screen.
“My thinking with Real Lava was that I wanted to feel more freedom putting together collaborations that I saw fitted the film,” the producer reflects on why she launched the new outfit, which is based in Copenhagen. “I think we have enormously fantastic talent in Denmark. I love how the Danish filmmakers and crew members are so good at collaborating with people from other places. I think that Denmark is a very boring country, to be honest. Nothing is really happening in Denmark but we have really talented people. Unfortunately, our funding system became very limited to Danish content, Danish stories…our financial structures and our broadcasters have become much more Danish focused. I think that is a mistake…I don’t believe in what my local broadcasters are doing. I needed to liberate myself from that structure.”
Newen Studios, a subsidiary of the TF1 Group, is a major French outfit with deep pockets. It will enable Dyekjær and Real Lava to work on a very ambitious level.
Dyekjær’s forthcoming projects through Real Lava are typically cosmopolitan. They include Merkel, a film about former German chancellor Angela Merkel. This is directed by Eva Weber and has again been made with her regular collaborators, Passion Pictures in the UK.
Meanwhile, in Venice next month, Dyekjær will be presenting another new feature documentary, Innocence, directed by Guy Davidi (the award-winning Israeli filmmaker behind Five Broken Cameras) and about children put under intense pressure to serve in Israel’s armed forces.
As for the Merkel project, yes, it will be up to date about the backlash against Merkel after the Russian invasion of Ukraine earlier this year. Even her admirers now question her policies toward Russian President, Vladimir Putin. The film will be finished soon.
“What is really great about the film is that it is told through her. It is not us trying to say a lot of things about Angela Merkel. It was done through archive material you’ve never seen before – archive material that is very much telling her own story.” Dyekjær is promising a film which will help audiences understand leadership and team building. It will tell the story of how Merkel grew up in East Germany before helping to reunite the country.
“She [Merkel] became the glue that Europe needed in order to pull through financial crises, pull through refugee crises, pull through Brexit…she has done an enormous work of trying to keep Europe together with all its different cultures, different languages and different traditions,” the producer explains. The other producers on the Merkel project are Lizzie Gillett, Sonja Henrici and Eva Weber.
Newen Studios own 51% of Real Lava, and is a company with a long-term vision to make films that “will last 100 years,” Dyekjær says. “They are not in it for the short-term business. They are there to support talent and create companies where talent can grow.” Earlier this summer, Newen acquired Teddy Leifer’s London-based doc powerhouse, Rise Films (the outfit behind Shaunak Sen’s Sundance winner All That Breathes) and Missing Films, a documentary about Lars von Trier, the ageing enfant terrible of Danish cinema who was recently diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. It’s anticipated that “one or two more [doc] companies” will also soon become part of the Newen Family.
Other docs in the Real Lava pipeline include A Song for Summer and Winter directed by Oscar nominated director Talal Detki (Of Fathers and Sons, 2019).
Dyekjær is also working with Brooklyn-based filmmaker Rachel Elizabeth Seed on Photographic Memory, in which the filmmaker goes in search of her mother, Sheila Turner-Seed an avant garde journalist and pioneering podcaster (on vinyl) who died when Rachel was only a kid but who left a treasure trove of interviews and aural materials behind her. This is being made together with Bow And Arrow (run by Matthew Perniciaro and Michael Sherman and best known for The Truffle Hunters).
Real Lava is working on further projects with Darren Aronofsky’s Protozoa Pictures including Rise, about the first batch of climate refugees in Louisiana. This is being directed by young, New York-based Danish documentary maker Sandra Winther, who has already dealt with the same subject matter in her short, Lowland Kids.
“I try to stay small to make sure the money lands on the screen,” the producer explains her philosophy at the company which is less than a year old but is already making a big noise in the documentary world.
