Double Oscar nomination hopeful Monica Hellström on Ström Pictures’ ambitions

January 24 is verdict day for the Oscars nominations and Monica Hellström is certainly holding her breath. Two of her films produced for Final Cut for Real have a chance to nab an Oscar nomination.

A House Made of Splinters by Simon Lereng Wilmont which centres on Ukrainian kids in an orphanage in the war-torn Donbas region, is shortlisted for best documentary, and her co-production A Boy Made from Heaven by Tarik Saleh - renamed Cairo Conspiracy by Samuel Goldwyn for the US release - for best international film.

Both films have had very successful festival rounds since their respective world premieres-at Sundance 2022 where Simon Lereng Wilmont won best director from the world cinema documentary strand (see our story: CLICK HERE) and Cannes 2022 where Saleh won best screenplay (see our story: CLICK HERE).

Since the Oscar short-listing announcement late December, Hellström and Lereng Wilmont have taken part in several AMPAS (Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences) screenings in the US, together with assistant director Azad Safarov, co-founder of the NGO Voices of Children with local production coordinator Lena Rozvadovska. “We’ve been working closely with them since the war in Ukraine started, raising funds and awareness among the film community on the long-term consequences of war on children. The Oscar campaign has been an amazing opportunity for us to talk about kids in Ukraine, the situation there and about this that matter to us,” Hellström told nordicfilmandtvnews.com.

The film has just been picked for US distribution by PBS’s POV, which handled Lereng Wilmont’s earlier award-winning film The Distant Barking of Dogs, also set in Eastern Ukraine and about children impacted by war.

While both A House Made of Splinters and The Distant Barking of Dogs were produced by Hellström for Final Cut for Real, Lereng Wilmont’s next documentary will be produced by Hellström under her new banner Ström Pictures set up last May. The untitled project about the plight of children in Moldova, another nation threatened by Putin’s expansion drive, has received development support from the Danish Film Institute.

Discussing her new company, Hellström says her idea to go solo became more pressing while she was finishing three major documentaries at the same time: the double-Oscar nominated film Flee, A House Made of Splinters and Cille Hannibal’s He’s My Brother. “It felt like the timing was right for me, after 12 years at Final Cut for Real. But I will continue to collaborate with co-founders Signe [Byrge Sørensen] and Anne [Köhncke, Final Cut for Real co-founders]” underscored Hellström, who is working with them on a fiction project in development and the Swedish documentary Ultras about football fans, produced by STORY AB.

Hellström says her strategy with Ström Pictures is “to carry on working on highly artistic features and documentaries for a wide audience, and to build long-term relationships with politically and socially-committed visionary filmmakers.”

The former ‘Producer on the Move in Cannes 2020’ feels optimistic about the future of documentary filmmaking in the Nordics. “It’s been challenging to raise funds for artistic documentaries, but today there are more players in the market, therefore more opportunities. I’ve been lucky to have worked on films that have appealed to large audiences worldwide, and to have built over time truth-worthy relationships with commissioners, which makes things slightly easier-I know what they are looking for and they understand the vision of the filmmakers I work with,” said Hellström.

The first project under Ström Pictures’ banner will be the film Laura by up-and -coming filmmaker Fanny Ovesen, produced by Sweden’s Marie Kjellsson of Kjellson & Wik. Filming of the drama is set to start next summer.