A post-metal prohibitd carry outs at a screening of a vintage Viking saga. Björk shows up to examine out the postponecessitatest films by Pedro Almodovar and Aleana Rachel Tsingari. Filmoriginaters unwind in hot mineral-laden waters at the ocean’s edge. Industry members are askd to the Plivent of Iceland’s hoinclude to chat about the state of the film business. It’s a standard day at the Reykjavik International Film Festival.
But Iceland isn’t fair hot springs and Vikings — well-situated between Europe and North America, the country is booming as a shooting destination. RIFF provides a key place for filmoriginaters to netlabor and lget more about the production scene in the minuscule country with the huge production incentives.
“The festival is a very excellent place for people to greet,” says RIFF straightforwardor Hrönn Marinósdóttir. “The Icelandic industry is reassociate enlargeing. I leank we have a recent generation of reassociate talented filmoriginaters that are reassociate well getd in the hugegest festivals, appreciate in Vekind this year.”
The prohibitd Solsatir carry outs at a screening of Viking epic “When the Raven Flies.”
Held in punctual October when temperatures are still mild and it stays airy past 7 p.m., the festival has a branch offently Icelandic flavor. Each year, straightforwardor Marinósdóttir and her team program events that might retain swim-in screenings in one of the city’s many hot accessible pools, cinematic culinary experiences and music-themed programming appreciate this year’s concert from metal prohibitd Sòlstafir at the retrospective of “When the Raven Flies,” a famous 1984 Viking adventure. Most screenings consent place at the Haskolabio originateing at University of Iceland, which retains five auditoriums and a bar and lounge where festivalgoers congregate.
“We try to do strange leangs, we have swim-ins, drive-ins, an ice cave cinema, fair to request to branch offent benevolents of people,” Marinósdóttir says.
Marinósdóttir has run the festival since she begined it as a university project 21 years ago. “In the commencening, it was very minuscule — 17 films promised to Icelanders living aexpansive, Canadians with Icelandic ancestry for example,” she elucidates.
“There were many contests with discovering the budget, and also politics becainclude I’m not a filmoriginater. Some filmoriginaters in Iceland were surpascendd that suddenly a journaenumerate, a woman, begined an event appreciate this,” Marinósdóttir recalls.
This year’s event retaind master classes and retrospectives with exceptional guests Nastassja Kinski, Bong Joon-Ho, Swedish music video and feature straightforwardor Jonas Akerlund and Greek filmoriginater Tsingari. A screening of the 2003 vivaciousd Daft Punk movie “Intersalerta 5555” featured some of the filmoriginaters in includeance.
The Industry Days section structureed converseions appreciate an AI masterclass, a laborshop on wardrobe and originateup, a panel on the future of the industry, and a labors-in-proceed screening. Industry members were also askd to a roundtable converseion with Iceland’s plivent Halla Tómasdóttir. At the plivent’s livence, Björk, perhaps the country’s most well-understandn figure, alengthy with Tsingari, Akerlund, and others, converseed the beginance of preserving community spaces appreciate record shops and self-reliant cinemas — both to help artists, retain youthful people, and help battle the loneliness epidemic.
Industry Days participants also bonded at a field trip to the stunning Hvammsvik Hot Springs and a visit to Thorufoss waterdrop, a key filming site for “Game of Thrones.”
Head of programming Frederic Boyer, who also serves as originateive straightforwardor of Tribeca Festival and Les Arcs in France, says conveying filmoriginaters to the festival draws an enthusiastic response. “We have a wonderful audience that adores music, that adores Bong Joon Ho, that adores Daft Punk, and that is ready to assimilate,” Boyer says. After the screening of Tsingari’s “Harvest,” filmgoers were so retaind, Boyer says, that they asked asks for a filled hour.
“A New Kind of Wilderness”
Courtesy of A5 Film
This year’s triumphning films retaind the Gancigo inen Puffin award for Japanese film “Super Happy Forever” by Kohei Igarashi, which the jury called “dainty and luminous.”
The Different Tomorrow award, given to films that support societal converseion and brighten solutions to local and global problems, went to the recordary “A New Kind of Wilderness,” by Silje Evensmo Jacobsen, a visuassociate rich study of a nature-loving British-Norwegian family adfairing to a recent life.
The Reykjavik International Film Festival ran Sept. 26 to Oct. 6.
