Linda Saetre

Linda Saetre is an accomplished producer, writer, and sales whiz who transitioned from a decade of experience in acquisition, development, and distribution as a film sales executive to immersing herself in production by founding NY-based Saetre Film Group, a film/TV production and distribution company. She is best known for serving as Vice President of Bonne Pioche International, producers of the Oscar-winning documentary March of the Penguins (2005) which grossed over $130 million in the first year, executive producing critically acclaimed documentaries such as major film festival competitor A Jihad for Love (2007), The Beauty Academy of Kabul (2005), and Sundance Channel's Waste, the Nuclear Nightmare (2009), Discovery Network/Bonne Pioche's $4.3M The Great Flood: Paris 2010 (2006) as well as producing Geography of the Hapless Heart (2014) with Harry Potter actress Bonnie Wright. At Saetre Film Group, she is developing several feature films and TV series, involved in aspects of producing from attaching various Hollywood talent to editing scripts to finding financing. The company has five feature films in various stages of development and preproduction: truth-based serial murderess thriller Belle Gunness, ridiculously late coming-of-age comedy The Reunion, feisty 75-year-old Southern Belle-led dramatic comedy I Still Got It, post-JFK assassination romantic drama Blue Ridge Mountain, and female-driven New Orleans Bayou thriller Outboard. Before moving to New York, native Norwegian Saetre studied in Paris, London, and Madrid, then graduated in 1998 from The New School's Research Media Graduate Program in New York. She went on to work for independent film company Fox Lorber, producer Jim Stark (Down by Law (1986), Jim Jarmusch's Coffee and Cigarettes (2003), PBS, Winstar, and Wellspring Media. At Wellspring, she was Executive Director of Sales and Co-Production, sharing her time between international acquisitions of films, international sales, promotion, and production. Notable achievements include her collaboration on the Cannes Film Festival hit Tarnation (2003) by Jonathan Caouette and her acquisition of hit TV series New Scandinavian Cooking (2003-). She then served as Vice President of Sales and Development of Bonne Pioche International for several years, managing the Oscar campaign for March of the Penguins, distributing and co-producing a number of their films. She is also a contributing writer to New York Times' best-selling authors Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida's literary magazine The Believer and has written op-eds for Norway's national newspaper Aftenposten. She is fluent in English, French, Spanish, and all Scandinavian languages.