Biografia
Producer Sigrid Dyekjær has produced over 30 documentary films in the past 22 years. She produced the Oscar-nominated 2020 film The Cave by Feras Fayyad, for which she won an Emmy for Best Producer and received a Peabody Award nomination. She also won Best Producer at Cinema Eye 2020 for The Cave and was nominated for the Producers Guild of America Award the same year. Her latest documentary, The Territory by Alex Pritz, premiered at Sundance 2022 under her new company Real Lava, winning the Audience Award and Jury's Special Award for Best Craft. The film, co-produced with Darren Aronofsky (Black Swan, The Wrestler, Mother), was acquired by National Geographic and slated for an Academy Award run in 2022.
She produced Oscar-nominee Hanna Polak’s Something Better to Come, which had a US theatrical release and won over 80 awards. For this, Dyekjær was nominated for Outstanding Producer of Documentary at the 2016 Producers Guild of America Awards. A member of the Producers Guild of America, she produced Love Child by Eva Mulvad in 2019, winner at the Chicago Film Festival and sold to POV; I Walk by acclaimed Danish director Jørgen Leth; School of Seduction by Alina Rudtnitskaya; Aquarela by Victor Kossakovsky, shortlisted for an Oscar in 2020; Hunting for Hedonia by Pernille Rose Grønkjær; the six-episode Scandinavian Star series by Mikala Krogh; and co-produced Lauren Greenfield’s The Kingmaker (2020) and Ulrich Seidl’s Safari.
Among her earlier works, she produced BUGS, which premiered at Tribeca Film Festival in 2016, won the Food Smart Cities Award at Cinemambiente Festival in Torino, and screened at over 50 festivals worldwide. She executive produced Ai Weiwei - The Fake Case by Andreas Johnsen, which had a US theatrical release, won the Film Critics' Award in Denmark (Bodil), and was nominated at IDFA’s feature-length competition. Other notable productions include The Monastery by Pernille Rose (Winner of the Joris Ivens Prize at IDFA 2006); The Newsroom - Off The Record by Mikala Krogh (opened Baltic Sea Forum, Best Documentary at Copenhagen TV Festival 2015, sold to over seven countries); Free the Mind by Phie Ambo (US theatrical release); The Good Life (Best Documentary, Karlovy Vary International Film Festival 2011) and A Modern Man (CPH:DOX and Sheffield Doc/Fest 2017) by Eva Mulvad; and Max Kestner’s Amateurs in Space, which competed at IDFA 2017.
Recognized as one of Denmark’s most experienced producers in international documentary financing and production, Dyekjær received the Ib Award in 2015 from the Danish Directors Association, honoring the best producer in the Danish film industry. In 2020, she won the Cinema Eye Award for outstanding producing of The Cave and was also nominated for outstanding producing for Aquarela. She teaches at the National Film School of Denmark and DOK Incubator, a Media-supported initiative, and delivers master classes and documentary filmmaking courses worldwide. In 2018, she was honored with membership in The Academy.
In spring 2021, Dyekjær left Danish Documentary to establish her new company, Real Lava, focusing on producing, co-producing, and investing in international documentaries from Denmark, backed by the French company Newen Studios. Real Lava launched in December 2021, with its first film, The Territory by Alex Pritz, premiering at Sundance 2022 and acquired by National Geographic.
