Edinburgh-based, Bavarian-raised producer Sonja Henrici is back this week at DOK Leipzig (October 26-November 1) two years after Training Light, directed by Thomas Riedelsheimer, opened the festival.
This year she is presenting Iranian director Maryam Haddadi’s The Enemy in the CoPro market. Henrici discovered Haddadi, now based in Scotland, after seeing her graduation film Accused Number 41, about her arrest by Tehran’s morality police and her complex relationship with the hijab, at Edinburgh College of Art.
“It moved me very much,” says Henrici. “She is a personal documentary filmmaker and she is a student of Emma Davie, a director I have collaborated with a lot. This is the project’s first public outing and so it is very nice Leipzig has chosen it.”
The Enemy again explores its director’s complex relationship with Iran, where many of her relatives still live.
“Maryam saw herself in this strange position where she cares for her family, she does not like the regime, but she cannot fathom how a lot of Iranians in exile are pro-Trump in this matter,” says Henrici.
Haddadi has a strong interest in the “non-violent communication” ideas of US psychologist Marshall Rosenberg and how they can be applied to current conflicts. “We connected on this shared interest,” Henrici says, who is coproducing through her Sonja Henrici Creates with Dutch outfit Mudland Studio.
Annus mirabilis
2026 has already been a banner year for Henrici. It started auspiciously with Birds Of War, a documentary love story about London-based Lebanese journalist Janay Boulos and Syrian activist/cameraman Abd Alkader Habak.
The film, which premiered at Sundance in January where it won the World Cinema Documentary grand jury prize, has been sold widely by Dogwoof. It is shortly to launch in North America through 8 Above and will have an awards run too.
Another of Henrici’s titles, Finlay Pretsell’s Douglas Gordon By Douglas Gordon, portraying the maverick and very fiery Scottish artist in his Berlin studio, was a world premiere in the Berlinale Panorama in February and has had a strong festival run since then.
Despite such successes, Henrici acknowledges that funding feature documentaries isn’t getting any easier. Projects she has on the boil include Pretsell’s new film Cyclovia, described as “a sensory odyssey through Colombia’s cycling culture” which US actor John Leguizamo is executive producing, and French-Danish director Lea Hejn’s new feature doc Mai & Miles, a nouvelle vague-style love story about a French scientist and an American jazz musician.
Her coproducers on the Hejn project include Nordic powerhouse Final Cut for Real and French outfit Babel Doc, and there is financing from Screen Scotland.
“I think it has been a very difficult year for a lot of people,” she says of the challenge of pulling together budgets. “With Mai & Miles, it has been very difficult to get the last piece of funding in to allow us to edit. The reality is you need to do almost the whole film before some of these partners come on board. It becomes tricky.”
New drama directions
Henrici has long been a mainstay of the Scottish documentary scene, first as co-director of Scottish Documentary Institute (2013-2020) and then as an independent producer. However, she is now also venturing into fiction.
“I’ve always loved fiction,” she says. “When I started my own company, in 2021, I always felt that I wanted to be able to pursue my curiosity. I also write. I have started writing some projects and have also started collaborating with other writers through my writing network.”
Fiction projects she is developing include a period piece telling a story of a leading female Hollywood executive from the 1930s and ’40s, and Shore Leave, written by emerging US screenwriter Roni Keller, which she describes as “a love story about a marine biologist who comes to Scotland and falls in love with a ‘selkie’, a mysterious seal-like figure who turns into a woman”. The director will be announced shortly.
Henrici wants to bring documentary-style “impact ideas” into fiction and explains Shore Leave will have a “strong line of marine conservation”.
Sonja Henrici Creates is run by Henrici herself. Fellow producer Nadja Lapcevic works part-time with the company, and Henrici brings in a finance manager, associate producers and line producers on individual projects.
She first came to Scotland to work in admin at the Edinburgh International Film Festival during the Lizzie Francke and Shane Danielsen years – and has stayed ever since.
“It is a very difficult occupation to do full time and live off,” she says of her career as an independent producer but adds that she is “very proud” of the part she has played in a Scottish documentary sector that is continuing to blossom.
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