Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Elsa Turull de ALma. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Elsa, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you talk to us about growing your team – how did you recruit the first few people, what was the process like, how’d you go about training and if you were to start over today would you have done anything differently?

At Larimar Films my best asset is my crew, my employees, they are the backbone of everything. We spend most of the day at the office. When we are filming on Set, we spend 6 days and 12-hour weekly work schedules. We need to get along very well and have the same work ethic. It’s the only way we can respect each other’s space and personality and work under pressure with self-control.

Larimar during the years opened Internships in different departments depending on the projects. The ones that identify with our work environment usually stay and they could work the full circle of the next movie project we develop. The internship program has become very popular, more than what we expected, in every project the applications have grown exponentially from different colleges, now we are also receiving internship requests from the Dominican film commission, imagine that.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

The movie business found me… as I can recall I have always been involved in the creative industry, years ago someone presented a movie that wanted to be filmed and needed help with the production aspect, and that’s how I started helping someone to make a dream a reality and since that first movie I haven’t stopped. This industry has given me the opportunity to make visual documents that will withstand time and will promote Dominican culture throughout the region.

Larimar Films is an independent production company based in Dominican Republic, we have filmed more than fifteen movies and three documentaries in the past ten years, and we have produced movies for Colombia, Brazil, Puerto Rico, Chile, and the UK.

Moreover, we owned more than 8 titles and you can see them through several streaming services. We have been recognized with awards in the Dominican Republic, United States, and Europe. Finally, my most proud accomplishment to this day is that we have introduced thousands of people to the movie business, who now are working continuously in major world-class productions.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

Due to the pandemic, we stopped filming. This shutdown affected a movie we were filming with a Colombian production company. The pandemic also made me lose a huge project with an Italian production company. It also stopped remakes of one of my movies in Japan. I send most of my employees home. I didn’t know how to make sense of the future for my company.

Nevertheless, this made me think out of the box, it challenged me in ways I never thought possible. So, I explored new markets to send my movies for distribution and made some new contacts, I registered with a company in the United States and started new scripts. After the lockdown was over, I reopened and reinvented the company in so many ways that I received two awards, one given to me The European Union recognized us as the biggest contend exporter from the DR in 2022 and Lifetime Achievement Award from the Producers Association of the Dominican Republic to me, given to honor an extraordinary achievement which has made a special contribution to Dominican Film Industry.

Do you have any stories of times when you almost missed payroll or any other near death experiences for your business?

This is a funny one,

Maybe most of the businesswomen don’t talk about the failures they have at balancing the house, kids, family, etc.… but I must say that is the hardest part when you work and try to keep it all together.

I learned that I must film the more demanding projects during the summer because it is easier for me as a mom, during school time they tend to lower their grades when they see me very involved at my work. I understood that and adapted. With that in mind, I put them in a long live-in summer camp.

Looking back, this is a funny one. In one of my early productions, I recall it was the second one as a producer. I come with the 2 boys at home at 7PM and … PUFFF… the electricity was cut off due to the fact that I didn’t pay my bill.

Boy’s were crying, I started to cry and we were all sitting at the front door. My husband came in and asked what was going on, I couldn’t speak, We were all tired, dirty and smelly… to make the story short he took us all to a hotel that night.

We can’t manage everything and be perfect.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.larimarfilmsrd.com/
• Instagram: @larimarfilms.rd
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/@LarimarFilmsrd

Image Credits
All Credits for Larimar FIlms