Iceland

Cinema of Iceland

Storytelling is a big part of Icelandic culture and we know a lot of this history because of the stories that the early settlers of Iceland wrote down more than one-thousand years ago.  These viking stories are now known as the “Sagas,” widely read in Iceland and around the world.  Sagas are the stories the Vikings wrote as historical dramatizations, written in prose chronicling events that took place in the 9th, 10th and 11th centuries.  

The Icelandic language has not changed in over 1,000 years and as a result can still be read today with complete comprehension.  This provides not only entertaining stories of conquering Kings and sea faring Vikings which have become common folklore across Iceland, but it is a written history which details the genealogy and heritage of most Icelanders today.  

Iceland’s true cinema culture took off in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s.

Until the institutionalization of national television in 1966, the majority of Iceland’s films were shot guerrilla style with 16mm cameras by mostly amateur filmmakers with a love for storytelling.

In the early 1900s, some documentaries were filmed, but the first true feature film known to be shot in Iceland wasn’t until 1921,“Sons of the Soil,” directed by a Danish actor and filmmaker, Gunnar Sommerfeldt.

A couple of years later, a local photographer, Loftur Gudundsson, directed the short film,”The Adventures of Jon and Gvendur,” inspired by the comedies of Charlie Chaplin. This is considered to be the first fully Icelandic film.

After his film career took off, Loftur Godmundsson’s production company, the Icelandic Film Corporation, grew to become the leading producer of Icelandic cinema.

Slowly in the 1960s and 1970s, more serious attempts at feature films took root, and in 1991, Iceland received its first Academy Award Nomination for Fridrik Thór Fridriksson’s second feature film, “Children of Nature.”  “Children of Nature” is about a retired farmer estranged from his daughter, who while living in a nursing home, escapes with a fellow resident, a former childhood friend, Stella.  Together the couple steal a jeep and return to their hometown to reminisce and spend quality time with each other.

In 1978 the founding of the Icelandic Film Fund also encouraged the growth of the film industry and since then, the Icelandic government has been a source of funding films for its filmmakers.

In the 1980’s and 1990’s, filmmakers such a Ágúst Guðmundsson, Hrafn Gunnlaugsson and Guðný Halldórsdóttir came to the forefront of Icelandic directors paving the way for the slightly more internationally known filmmakers of the 2000s. These filmmakers of the 2000s, include, Benedikt Erlingsson’s, known for his 2013 quirky flick “Of Horses and Men;” Baltasar Kormákur, who’s “101 Reykjavik” defined Icelandic culture for the millennial generation; and Dagur Kári, who’s cult-classic 2003 film, “Noi the Albino,” struck-home with Icelanders living outside of Reykjavik. “Noi the Albino” is loosely based on the town of Flateyri.

Because of its landscape and fantastic light, many Hollywood films have been shot in Iceland, including “Batman Begins,” “Star Trek:  Into The Darkness,” “Star Wars: Rogue One,” James Bond’s “Die Another Day,” “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,” “Prometheus,” “Interstellar,” and more! The landscape lends itself to fantasy fiction, post-apocalyptic worlds, moon landings or space adventures.

And much of the infamous epic, fantastical television series “Game of Thrones” was shot in Iceland.  Everything “North of the Wall” was filmed in this land of “Ice and Fire.”  Season Four of HBO’s “True Detective” was also filmed in Iceland.

Iceland has a small but extremely professional film community and it’s an amenable place for foreign film crews to shoot their epics with complete freedom in an isolated democracy.