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“It seemed the perfect combination – a powerful woman; the Middle East and fighting against the odds, so right now I am passionate about Queen Zenobia, she was a Persian Queen who stood up and fought against Rome.” I must admit that this is news to me, but the pure passion with which Sarodjiny Carlwig speaks is infectious and I am compelled to ask more.
She is one of a remarkably exclusive club of individuals who can legitimately print ‘Movie Producer’ on the inside page of her passport under the profession section, and even this is somewhat modest.
She blames it all on aliens, or to be more specific one particular Spielberg produced Extra Terrestrial who dominated her early childhood;
“I was six, E.T. was the first film I really watched, I don’t mean that it was on in the background and that it distracted me for a while, I mean I was engrossed; completely submerged in the story for months. You can imagine me as a six year old hoping to find my own E.T. and peddling my little bike like crazy to try and make it fly!”
She laughs through a beaming smile, and then the passion returns; “I knew then that all I wanted to do was produce movies”
“I suppose my apprenticeship was the summer breaks where I worked as a production assistant. I also worked in a talent agency and as an assistant for a casting agency and it taught me so much about how the industry works. I did all the sensible stuff too, including graduating from law school, but of course I didn’t want to be in some stuffy law office and so I got a great job with the legal department of New Line Cinema.”
She's a little shy about name dropping, determined to make it on her own more likely, but later on she also worked on the Lord of The Rings trilogy with Peter Jackson, and The Notebook directed by Nick Cassavetes.
Sarodjiny is obviously driven; “My goal has always been to build my own Empire in the Movie business” and we get back to why she is in Dubai; “It was in May of 2007, and I was taking part in the Cannes Film Festival in the South of France. At the time the Dubai film industry was almost non-existent, but the City was well known as the Play Ground of the Middle East. There was a group from the Dubai Film Festival there and they invited budding entrepreneurs to a presentation looking for producers to work in Dubai. With initiatives like Studio City and the Dubai Film Festival you could tell that they were serious about making this place special and, in addition to that, the Abu Dhabi Government has created a fund of 1 billion USD to support the development of this industry.
Dubai was already ticking all the boxes from a lifestyle point of view and tax free helps but really I wanted somewhere safe and clean for my family to grow up. My son’s one year old in a couple of weeks´ time and I want him to grow up with a fully developed view of the World around him.”
She is now establishing Globetrotter Productions in Dubai, where she will produce feature films in association with several leading Hollywood studios and production companies.
