Iceland Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Iceland has a more robust film industry than you might expect from a small island nation of only 320,000 people, but still, it ain't exactly Hollywood. So when an Icelandic film gains worldwide attention, it's newsworthy.

Such is the case with Jar City, an excellent mystery thriller that Cinematical's Kim Voynar raved about last year at Telluride. It's the highest-grossing film in the country's history, from one of its most successful (and prolific directors), and it won a top prize at the 2007 Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.

And now it gets the ultimate honor: an American remake! (There may have been sarcasm in the word "honor.") According to The Hollywood Reporter, Overture Films has bought the remake rights and will employ the original writer/director, Baltasar Kormákur, as a producer. No word yet on who will direct the U.S. version, but a writer has been attached: Michael Ross, who wrote Turistas and who THR says is also penning the Near Dark remake.

The Icelandic setting will be changed, of course, to its logical American counterpart: Louisiana. No, really. I'm curious to see how the story transfers, since some of its details relate to the insularity of those small Icelandic communities. Also, I loved that the detective in the original was a total badass despite looking like a nerdy college professor. (That's him in the picture.) I hope they keep that element for the remake. William H. Macy would be perfect.

As far as I can determine, this is the first time an Icelandic film has officially gotten an American remake. If anyone knows differently, let me know. Otherwise, I'm marking this as a historic first for our friends in the North Atlantic.

Good news for fans of Icelandic cinema: IFC has picked up the cop thriller Jar City in what is apparently the first buy of this year's Toronto International Film Festival. (Variety calls it the "first official buy"; The Hollywood Reporter calls it "one of the first sales." The point is, the fest only started yesterday and already the cash registers are ka-chinging.)

Peter Martin told us last week about the film's fast-rising profile. It's Iceland's highest-grossing film of all time, and it won the Grand Prix competition at the Karlovy Vary fest in July. It picked up more steam when it played at Telluride last week. Based on a novel, it is the fourth film from writer/director Baltasar Kormakur, and the fourth to play at Toronto. I saw (and adored) his first two, 101 Reykjavik and The Sea; the third one, A Little Trip to Heaven, which I have not seen, was filmed in English and starred Forest Whitaker and Julia Stiles.

Kormakur returns to his native tongue in Jar City, which focuses on two connected plots. In one, a man tries to determine how his daughter could have contracted a rare genetic disease that no one in his family has ever had; in the other, a cop looks for a murderer. They cross paths; mysteries unfold; thrillarity ensues. IFC's First Take division will distribute the film theatrically in North America. No word yet on when that will be, or how much IFC paid for it.

Released in its native Iceland last fall, Jar City has been drawing an increasing amount of acclaim as it screens its way around the globe. To begin with, the thriller smashed box office records at home, where it's been estimated that as many as one in three residents have seen it. Sure, only about 300,000 people live in Iceland, but that's still a mighty impressive figure. Jar City won five Eddas (Icelandic Film and Television Awards), as reported by Land & synir, including "Feature Film of the Year" and "Director of the Year."

Though it played at the European Film Market in February of this year, Jar City doesn't seem to have played any festivals until Karlovy Vary in July, where it won the Grand Prix competition. In advance of the ceremonies, Kim Voynar pointed to a prediction by David D'Arcy at GreenCine Daily that the film would be the likely winner; he described it as "a thriller about genetic codes and DNA determinism." The film trails a police detective investigating the death of an old man as well as a father's determined research to discover "the origins of a brain disease affecting his daughter."

Other critical reaction has also been positive. Boyd van Hoeij at european-films.net wrote: "At once wholly Icelandic and completely accessible for foreign audiences, [Jar City] reverberates with strong echoes of what it means to be Icelandic, what it means to be part of a family and what it means to be human." Todd Brown at Twitch says that it's "a stark and elegaic piece of work ... worlds away from the typical Hollywood murder mystery."

Jar City has just been announced for the Telluride Film Festival (though I neglected to include it in my story) and will also be playing at the Toronto fest. Check out the possibly NSFW trailer to get a feel for the atmosphere and mood. Director Baltasar Kormákur previously made The Sea and 101 Reykjavik; I'm a big fan of his work, so I'm crossing my fingers that a sharp, discerning, very savvy distributor will pick this up for North American release.

The Icelandic film Eleven Men Out has just obtained North American distribution from here! Films. The 2005 film, about a soccer star who is fired from his professional team after he outs himself, then eventually leads an all-gay amateur soccer team, played a number of U.S. film festivals last year. Martha Fischer, who reviewed the film at last year's New Directors/New Films festival, found it charming and engaging (I know she's a pushover for soccer); I reviewed it myself during aGLIFF in Austin and thought it was funny at times, but relied too much on gay stereotyping. Eleven Men Out is the third feature film from Reykjavik writer/director Robert I. Douglas.

here! Films is the theatrical division of the gay-themed cable channel of the same name. The company plans to release the film in theaters this summer through distributor Regent Releasing. If you get tired of watching big blockbuster comedies, Eleven Men Out might provide an amusing alternative. I assume that at some point after the theatrical release, you'll be able to catch the film on the here! channel if it's available in your area.

[via IndieWIRE]

One of the fascinating aspects of attending aGLIFF was the "I" in the festival name: International. The festival showed a number of foreign-language films this year, which provided Austin (and American) audiences with the opportunity to see how gay and gender issues are addressed in other countries. Eleven Men Out provides a glimpse into gay culture and its acceptance (or rejection) in Reykjavik, Iceland.

Eleven Men Out begins and ends in a sports arena. Ottar Thor (Björn Hlynur Haraldsson) is a professional soccer star who decides, after scoring an amazing kick to win a championship game, to come out of the closet. He's essentially kicked off the team, and his father, one of the managers, keeps trying to convince Ottar to change his mind. Ottar's teenage son Magnus (Arnaldur Ernst) is disgusted and convinced that Ottar doesn't care about him and the effect his coming-out has on his own life. Ottar's ex-wife Gugga (Lilja Nótt Þórarinsdóttir), an alcoholic former Miss Iceland, is only concerned because Ottar won't sleep with her anymore. Ottar's friend Pétur gets him involved with an amateur soccer team with a few gay men on it, which suddenly becomes labeled "the gay team," causing all kinds of trouble. Other teams in the league forfeit games rather than have to play with gay men, but the team itself becomes stronger and more confident as more gay teammates join.

Eleven Men Out, the third feature from Icelandic director Róbert I. Douglas, tries very hard to do many things. On one hand, Douglas' film is a semi-serious exploration of how a heterogeneous, male-oriented society reacts when one of its sports heroes announces that he's gay. On the other, though, it's a cheerful, fun Gay Movie, complete with a soccer-playing drag queen and a man in a baby doll tshirt that reads "I DID BECKHAM." On a third hand, Eleven Men Out is just the latest in the long line of stories about gay characters rising above the ignorance of others, in which no one is ever seriously mistreated, and there's very little doubt that the ending will be a happy one.

On yet a fourth hand, however, the movie bears a sneaking similarity to a new wave of films coming out of Eastern Europe (The Death of Mr. Lazarescu and Something like Happiness, for example), in which the difficulty of life is a fact rather than the point, and characters find their own reasons to keep living. Unfortunately, Douglas only hints around this last element, which is easily the most interesting in his ultimately rather lightweight film.