Producer Elisa Fernanda Pirir is leaving Norway’s Mer Film to set up her production company Staer based in Tromso in northern Norway.
Collaborators in the new venture include co-owner Kristine Ann Skaret, a documentary expert from Stray Dogs whose credits include Villagers And Vagabonds and Aswang; and executive producer Jim Stark, the US producer who has credits including co-producing Jim Jarmusch’s Down By Law and serving as one of the executive producers of Triangle Of Sadness.
Staer will work with a mix of Scandinavian and international filmmakers.
Pirir already has a busy slate and first up is the feature documentary Calls From Moscow by the Cuban filmmaker Luis Alejandro Yero, about young Cuban people living in Russia. The film will receive its world premiere in Berlinale Forum and Pirir has co-produced.
Staer is co-producing Nabil Ayouch’s Touda, shooting now; Inadelso Cosa’s The Nights Still Smell Of Gunpowder, which is in post; and Juan Andres Arango’s Where The River Begins, which is scheduled to shoot in Colombia this autumn.
For Norway’s Marte Vold, a DOP and co-director with Ole Giæver of Out Of Nature, Pirir will produce an experimental fiction-documentary hybrid film about Norwegian whalers. She also has several fiction features in development with northern Norwegian director Anders Emblem, who made a splash at 2022 festivals with A Human Position.
Elle Sofe Sara will make her directorial feature debut with the Sami musical Arru, set to shoot in 2023 in Kautokeino, with Garagefilm International in Sweden and the International Sami Film Institute also on board.
Director Dalia Huerta Cano is plotting Resistance, to shoot in Guatemala in 2024, about the kidnapping of two Norwegian workers. Cesar Diaz (Our Mothers) is writing the script.
Pirir says she wants the new company to “develop, produce and co-produce independent feature films and documentaries of high artistic quality and relevance”. She is concentrating on arthouse films and will not work with series or commercials.
Pirir is a Guatemala native of indigenous heritage who has lived in Tromso since 2007.
Creating her own company is, she said, “something I’ve been thinking about for a couple of years. In taking part in talent programmes I saw so few producers with diverse or Indigenous backgrounds running companies”.
As Maria Ekerhovd’s Mer Film moves into bigger productions (the latest is the epic War Sailor), Pirir told Screen at the Tromso International Film Festival, “I really want to work with new directors, lower-budget movies. Somebody has to take the risk on these kinds of projects… I want to work on difficult projects, not commercial ones.”
Pirir named the company Staer, which translates into “starlings”, because they are “migratory birds that flock together to support and protect each other when they fly in flocks from Scandinavia to South Europe and back. Together they stay strong and reach their goal after a long and demanding journey”.
Pirir had been at Mer Film for more than six years, working on films including San Sebastian 2022 Golden Shell winner The Kings Of The World (co-producer) and as an associate producer of Birds Of Passage and Flee. She also led Mer’s new talent programme.
In addition to Tromso being her home for many years, she says the city has a big international community, strong regional film support from the likes of Filmfond Nord, the Northern Norway Film Commission and International Sami Film Institute. The post-production company Film Reaktor recently opened a new office.
Pirir is on a festival tour kicking off in Tromso (where she is presenting Emilija Skarnulyte’s Burial) and will then travel to Trieste (with an EWA cohort), Rotterdam (where she is selected for IFFR Lab), Goteborg (where she is presenting Burial), and Berlinale (where she is taking part in the EFM’s Toolbox for producers).
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