A post-metal band performs throughout a screening of the traditional Viking saga. Björk reveals as much as watch Pedro Almodóvar and Athena Rachel Chingari’s newest movie. The filmmakers calm down within the heat, mineral-rich waters of the seaside. Business members have been invited to the Icelandic presidential palace to speak concerning the state of the movie trade. It’s a typical day on the Reykjavik Worldwide Movie Pageant.
However there’s extra to Iceland than simply scorching springs and Vikings—located between Europe and North America, the nation is booming as a filming vacation spot. RIFF gives an necessary venue for filmmakers to community and study extra concerning the small nation’s manufacturing scene, in addition to obtain profitable manufacturing incentives.
“This competition is a good place for individuals to come back collectively,” stated RIFF Director Hrönn Marinósdóttir. “The Icelandic trade is basically rising. I believe we now have a brand new technology of very proficient filmmakers who’re nicely obtained on the greatest movie festivals, equivalent to this yr’s Venice Movie Pageant.
The Solsatir Orchestra performs at a screening of the Viking epic Because the Crow Flies.
The competition takes place in early October, when temperatures are nonetheless reasonable and it is nonetheless shiny after 7pm, with a distinctly Icelandic taste. Every year, director Marinósdóttir and her staff plan occasions, which can embrace swim screenings in one of many metropolis’s many heat public swimming pools, cinematic meals experiences and music-themed programming, equivalent to this yr’s live performance at a retrospective of metallic band Sòlstafir “Raven Flies,” the favored 1984 Viking journey story. Most screenings are held on the College of Iceland’s Hasko Rabiot Constructing, which incorporates 5 auditoriums in addition to a bar and lounge for festival-goers collect.
“We attempt to do some bizarre issues, we now have a swimming pool, a parking lot, an ice cave cinema, simply to draw various kinds of individuals,” Marinosdottir stated.
Marinósdóttir has been working the competition because it began as a college undertaking 21 years in the past. “To start with, it was small – 17 movies particularly aimed toward Icelanders dwelling overseas, equivalent to Canadians of Icelandic descent,” she explains.
“There have been a number of challenges when it comes to discovering budgets and politics as a result of I’m not a filmmaker. Some filmmakers in Iceland have been shocked {that a} journalist, a lady, immediately began such a marketing campaign,” remembers Marinosdóttir. .
This yr’s occasion consists of masterclasses and a retrospective, with particular visitors together with Nastassja Kinski, Bong Joon-Ho, and Swedish music video and have movie director Jonas Akron Jonas Akerlund and Greek filmmaker Tsingari. A number of filmmakers attended a screening of the 2003 Daft Punk animated movie Interstella 5555.
The Business Day part featured discussions equivalent to an Synthetic Intelligence masterclass, a clothes and make-up workshop, a panel dialogue on the way forward for the trade, and an ongoing number of works. Business members are additionally invited to take part in a roundtable dialogue with Icelandic President Halla Tómasdóttir. On the presidential palace, Björk, maybe the nation’s most well-known determine, joined Tsingari, Akerlund and others to debate the significance of preserving group areas like file shops and impartial cinemas – each of which assist artists, Interact younger individuals and assist fight the loneliness epidemic.
Business Day individuals additionally visited the beautiful Hvammsvik scorching springs and visited the Thorufoss waterfall, a serious filming location for Recreation of Thrones.
Programming director Frederic Boyer, who can be the creative director of France’s Tribeca Movie Pageant and Les Arcs, stated there was an amazing response to filmmakers attending the competition. “We now have an enormous viewers that loves music, loves Bong Joon-ho, loves Daft Punk, they usually’re prepared to soak up it,” Boyer stated. Boyer stated moviegoers have been so engaged after the screening of Tsingari’s “The Harvest” that they requested questions for a full hour.
“A brand new form of wilderness”
Courtesy of A5 Movies
This yr’s award-winning movies embrace the Golden Puffin Award for the Japanese movie “Fortunately Ever After” directed by Kohei Igarashi, which the jury described as “beautiful and shiny”.
The Completely different Tomorrows award, awarded to movies that promote social dialogue and illuminate options to native and world issues, went to Silje Evensmo Jacobsen’s documentary A New Type of Wilderness, which profiles a nature-loving British – Norwegian conducts a visually wealthy research of a household adapting to their new life.
The Reykjavik Worldwide Movie Pageant runs from September 26 to October 6.
