jar city 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.