Maria Ekerhovd is the founder and owner of Mer Film, a leading Norwegian production company with offices in Tromsø, Bergen, and Oslo, as well as a distribution arm. Since founding the company in 2011, she has established Mer Film as a key player in European cinema, combining strong artistic ambition with major international recognition.

Her recent production Sentimental Value (dir. Joachim Trier) premiered in competition at Cannes, where it won the Grand Prix, and went on to win six European Film Awards, including Best Film, the BAFTA for Best Film Not in the English Language, and the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film, following nine Oscar nominations.

Ekerhovd first gained international recognition as producer of the Palme d’Or–winning short Sniffer (2006), and has since produced a number of critically acclaimed films, including Out of Nature by Ole Giæver (Berlinale 2015), What Will People Say by Iram Haq (Toronto 2017), and The Innocents by Eskil Vogt (Cannes 2021). In 2022, she produced Norway’s top-grossing film of the year, War Sailor by Gunnar Vikene.

In 2025, The Ugly Stepsister by Emilie Blichfeldt premiered at Sundance and Berlinale and later received an Academy Award nomination.