Iceland review - 2014, Qupperneq 18

16 ICELAND REVIEW
We never rehearsed but rather met to improvise and get to know the characters;
we wanted to know everything about them.
our procedure is that, over a long period,
we make notes when we hear interesting
stories and let them ‘marinate.’ We were
fortunate in that the producers gave us,
to a certain extent, liberty to take our
time for preparation, working with the
actors on deepening the characters. We
never rehearsed but rather met to impro-
vise and get to know the characters; we
wanted to know everything about them.
When we reached the point where the
actors felt more confident about their
characters than i did—like when Steini
[Þorsteinn Bachmann] commented: ‘Móri
would never say that’—i knew it was time
to let them loose.
5. in the film, viewers start rooting for
the underdogs, while the person who
has it all loses his feathers. is the film’s
moral that nothing is what it seems?
exactly. i made a point of not showing the
characters in the right light the first time
we meet them. Don’t judge a book by its
cover; that’s a theme in the film.
6. Given all the praise the film has been
receiving in iceland, i’m sure overseas
audiences are getting anxious. When
will it be screened abroad?
We’ve sent it to a big autumn film festival,
Toronto, and will send it to Sundance if
that doesn’t work out. i’m hopeful about
Toronto because Jitters (Órói; 2010) was
screened there. Distribution contracts
for public screening have been made in
Scandinavia and in Canada.
7. You’re now shooting a documentary
about Reynir sterki (1939-1982), a leg-
endary icelandic strongman, set to pre-
miere in 2015. How did that happen?
you know, reynir sterki is probably the rea-
son i wanted to become a filmmaker. i’ve
had his story stuck in my head since i was
a kid. He had this incredible strength—i
looked at him as a kind of superhero—and
when i learned more about his life, which
was filled with tears, i wanted to tell his
story even more.
8. Are you working on other projects at
the moment?
Biggi and i are writing a screenplay for
a feature film with the working title The
Contalgin Children. Contalgin is morphine,
a heroin-related drug. originally, we called
it The Lost Girls after the teenage girls reg-
ularly reported missing in the news. We’re
working with some of them. The condition
is that they remain sober and two have
found a purpose in life through the project.
a diary written by a girl called Kristín
Gerður, who died in 2001, sparked the
idea for the film. She experienced the
icelandic underworld in the 1990s. Then
Jóhannes Kr. Kristjánsson [a reporter,
whose 17-year-old daughter Sissa died
of an overdose of prescription drugs in
2010] joined the project. The film will be
dedicated to her and Kristín. They were
cousins and friends.
9. Your films are dramatic, if not with-
out humor. is that your thing or can we
expect you to release a comedy at some
point?
i’m drawn to drama. There’s so much sun-
shine in my life, so i guess i seek the dark-
ness there [smiles]. But you never know, i
might feel compelled to make a comedy
after this.
10. Do you dream about Hollywood?
i have a dream, but not necessarily about
Hollywood. i dream about making films
always on my own terms, also elsewhere
than in iceland. But i don’t want to
struggle. For now, i’m going to enjoy
living and working here and if it happens,
it happens. *
Life in a Fishbowl is currently screening
daily with english subtitles in Háskólabíó
cinema in reykjavík.
FiLm
Þorvaldur davíð kristjánsson and hera hilmarsdóttir in their roles as up-and-
coming banker Sölvi and young single mother eik in Life in a Fishbowl.
an unlikely friendship forms between drunken author Móri
(Þorsteinn Bachmann) and eik.