Screen unveils 2024 Rising Stars Scotland line-up
NADIRA MURRAY
Edinburgh-based producer Nadira Murray is determined to bring the voices and vision of first-generation immigrants and refugees/asylum seekers to cinema screens through her company Sylph Productions. The goal is to “connect the east and west through cinematic experiences”.
Murray’s drive is backgrounded by her own immigrant story. Born in Uzbekistan, she was visiting the UK in 2004 when she learned she had been blacklisted and faced arrest on returning home. “The accusations were unrelated to art, though I grew up seeing my dad’s plays being banned both during Soviet times and after its collapse,” says Murray, whose father was a playwright and theatre director and mother an actress. Murray flew to Kyiv before returning to the UK on a student visa, although her family remains in Uzbekistan.
After training at Drama Studio London, Murray acted in theatre but was not satisfied. She pursued film production at Spain’s Media Business School, supported by Creative Europe Media, before landing in Edinburgh, by now a UK citizen and armed with the know-how and chutzpah to set up Sylph. She is co-producing feature-length documentary Flotsam, directed by Isa Rao, billed as an exploration of animal consciousness within the context of pollution and ecological systems. It is backed by Screen Scotland’s development fund, and John Archer of Glasgow’s Hopscotch Films co-produces.
Murray is also associate producer on Sean Dunn’s The Fall Of Sir Douglas Weatherford, a feature backed by BBC Film, the BFI and Screen Scotland, while Sylph is in early pre-production on a feature based on the bookThe Girl Who Beat Isis, a first-person account of what happened after two Yazidi women were captured by Islamic State, alongside producers Lloyd Levin and Beatriz Levin of Shadowplay Pictures.
The film reunites Murray with Aberdeen-based UK-Iranian filmmaker Hassan Nazer, after she was a producer on his film Winners, the UK submission for the 2023 best international feature Oscar. “I came on holiday to Scotland and stayed, never went back to London,” says Murray. “It’s my intellectual, spiritual and business home.”
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