Stina Gardell, managing director of Sweden’s top documentary production company Mantaray Film, recipient of Prix Italia awards for The Nun (2007) and He Thinks he is the Best (2012) has a burning passion for her job, that has helped her fight back at Covid-19 and launch no less than five films since January.

After Kristina Lindström and Kristian Petri’s The Most Beautiful Boy in the World, one of Sundance’s hottest docs, running for Best Doc at the European Film Awards, Gardell has launched Maja Borg’s personal film Passion at CPH:DOX.

Movie Man, Gardell’s own tribute to one of Sweden’s most celebrated film critics and directors Stig Björkman (Ingrid Bergman in Her Own Words, Images from the Playground) was released locally by Mantaray Film in May and is having its international premiere this week at Hamptons Doc Festival.

“In the middle of Covid-19, I decided to take the camera to make a tribute to filmmaking, to everyone who had been sitting alone on their sofa watching films during the pandemic, such as our beloved Stig Björkman,” said Gardell who produced Ingrid Bergman in her own Words.
“Stig - aged 83 - who is a natural backpacker and film festival fanatic was forced to stay at home due to Covid. I was afraid he would die out of boredom in his small flat in Stockholm, so I wanted to keep him company and started to do a film about him -watching films, speaking on the phone/zoom to his numerous friends and colleagues in the industry - Isabella Rossellini, Alicia Vikander, Olivier Assayas, Jørgen Leth, Joyce Carol Oates to cite a few-all agreed to take part.”

Björkman’s own film Joyce Carole Oates: A Body in The Service of Mind produced by Gardell, is the opening film today December 3^rd of Hamptons Doc Fest. Through his long-standing friendship with the prolific US author, behind more than a hundred books, Björkman has documented her mornings of longhand writing, her walks with her husband and visited her within her solitude.

Gardell said she’s made a special version of the film for the US world premiere, but is still working on a different edit for a European distribution and plans to release the film in Sweden in 2022.

Meanwhile Amanda Pesikan’s feature length debut The Choir opened November 26 in Sweden via DocLounge. The director has followed one of Sweden's most famous choirs - Tensta Gospel Choir - on a crucial journey to Chicago. The film documents a crucial time in the choir’s history, while tackling issues of religion, individuality and community.

“The Tensta Gospel Choir is a fascinating group of people of all kinds - atheists, Muslims, Christians, alcoholic, gay. They love to sing gospels, want to have fun, and don’t pay attention to the Christian message of Gospel songs. But then for the leader of the choir who is a believer, this is problematic,” says Gardell.

DocLounge’s distribution and development manager Jonas Pedersen Hardebrant said he put together Q&As with the director and choir members for last week’s Swedish premiere and is now arranging further screenings outside of Stockholm.

International sales are shared between East Village Entertainment in the US and Taskovski Films.

Catching the complexity of being human
Looking at her body of work - 29 films and 9 co-productions released since she set up Mantaray Film in 2005, Gardell says what drives her is her love for films that reflect the complexity of being human. “Documentaries are often a wonderful way to mirror how difficult it is to be a mother, a father, a child, a woman. This is the case with Ingrid Bergman [in the film Ingrid Bergman in her own Words], whose life transcends what it is to be a woman today,” notes Gardell.

Asked if she is particularly keen to tell female stories - as many of her docs are female-centric, Gardell says: “I’ve produced many films about women, by women directors, not because they are women, but because we hadn’t heard those women’s perspectives before. But then it was as interesting for me to produce The Most Beautiful Man in the World about a man who was exploited as a boy. That was a very refreshing viewpoint, breaking away from many one-dimensional male stories,” adds Gardell.

Ultimately, bringing urgent stories to the screens is what matters most for the producer. “When I choose a film, I have to feel that the filmmaker is burning to tell his story, through a political, social, personal or even musical perspective-it doesn’t matter. But it has to have a voice and unique viewpoint.”

Challenging times
Reflecting on today’s challenges of raising financing for creative documentaries, Gardell says the sector has always been fragile, but the pandemic has had a damaging effect across the whole industry, struggling to reinvent itself in the streaming era. “What I see is that everyone is poor - producers, sales agents, distributors, cinema owners have been hit. There is no money in the system and now that the Covid crisis is - almost - over, the Swedish government is stopping to offer rescue packages. Suddenly we’re standing alone in a non-existing market, and it’s not the US streamers who buy creative documentaries,” she adds.

For Gardell, support from public funds and co-productions are all the more essential for the survival of creative docs. She herself is actively involved in co-productions - such as the hot Danish doc The Lost Leonardo by Andreas Kofoed, set to open December 10 in Sweden via SF/Sony. The Swedish creative contributions to the film include the score from Sveinung Nygaard, nominated for Best Music Score at the IDA (International Documentary Association) Awards.

Upcoming co-productions include Britt Ekland-Sex Kitten by Hannah Berryman (Can We Live with Robots). The UK doc produced by Nick Varley is due to be delivered in 2022.

The prolific Swedish producer has a handful of docs in various stages of production.

• Aida Was Here is Gardell’s next collaboration with Pesikan.
  The project which won the Tempo Pitch 2021, gives three perspectives of a childhood, told by the artist and photographer Aida Chehregosha and her parents.
• Adil and the Spy by Swedish investigative journalist Randi Mossige-Norheim is a mega-project about Adil - of the Uighur minority Muslim ethnic group in China - a victim of persecution from China, war on terrorism and even circumstances, who simply wants to be reunited with his family.
• The Phantom Pain of Rojava is directed by Maryam Ebrahimi (Stronger Than a Bullet, No Burqa Behind Bars). The film which received a Chicken & Egg Award 2021, is a journey into the life of a group of female fighters whose dream is to change the world by starting a women’s revolution.

Gardell has also asked producer/director of Iranian-origin Maryam Ebrahimi to join her company to build within Mantaray Film a producers’ collective and add ‘complexity’ to the Swedish doc powerhouse. Other recent additions to Gardell’s production team include Maida Krak and Mirjam Gelhorn.

“So many producers work in isolation and suffer from burn out. I want to offer at Mantaray a talent development platform for producers where we can all exchange ideas and help each other,” says Gardell.