Laufey Guðjónsdóttir, Director of The Icelandic Film Centre
Documentary has been pushed up the agenda at the Icelandic Film Centre in recent times. Around €1.3m is set aside to support feature docs each year. There is also extra infrastructural support with seminars and workshops, and promotional support for the sector. IFC director Laufey Guðjónsdóttir talks to BDE of a concerted attempt to “get the overall framework stronger for docs.”
In spite of the turbulence caused by Covid, the strategy appears to be paying dividends. There was a strong Icelandic presence both at Visions du Réel in Nyon last week and at CPH:DOX.
Helga Rakel Rafnsdóttir’s Spare Parts, about an eccentric man whose farm is full of wrecked cars, competed in the medium length and short film category at VdR. Meanwhile, Spanish directors Rafa Molés and Pepe Andreu’ Lobster Soup, on which Icelandic outfit Axfilms was the minority co-producer, also showed at the Swiss Festival, in Grand Angle. Sold by Wide, this is the story of a tiny cafe in a small town to which fishermen, musicians, football fans and tourists all flock – but whose growing popularity also attracts greedy, profit-seeking investors.
“I think we have a bunch of very talented filmmakers in documentary and they’ve been doing a great job,” Guðjónsdóttir says.
Prominent names in the new Icelandic doc wave include Rafnsdóttir; editor turned director Stefanía Thors (who had a hit at Hot Docs last year with The School Of Housewives); Yrsa Roca Fannberg (director of 2019’s The Last Autumn and who now has a new project set in an old people’s home); newcomer Álfrún Örnólfsdóttir whose doc Band has been chosen for the work in progress section of the CPH: Forum this week; former Sundance winner Ísold Uggadóttir who is developing new doc The Tower, and Gudjón Ragnarsson, whose girls’ basketball film Raise The Bar screens in Hot Docs.
Meanwhile, Anna Hildur Hildibrandsdóttir created a splash last year with her debut feature doc A Song Called Hate (sold by Level K), about outrageous Icelandic punk group Hatari (an anti-capitalist, BDSM, techno-dystopian, performance art collective) who ruffled feathers when they represented their country in the 2019 Eurovision Song Contest in Israel.
Production outfits like Compass Films and Akkeri Films are also thriving. Akkeri, launched by Hanna Björk Valsdóttir and sound designer Björn Viktorsson in 2015, had notable success both with The Last Autumn and with 2019 festival favourite Dive: Rituals In Water, directed by Elín Hansdóttir, Valsdóttir herself and Anna Rún Tryggvadóttir.
“Nicely enough, it is a bunch of powerful women who seem to be driving the scene here,” Guðjónsdóttir says of the ongoing Icelandic doc revival. “Somehow, more women seem to be working in documentaries than feature films.”
Some veteran male directors are also still active on the feature doc scene. Fridrik Thor Fridriksson (Children of Nature, Cold Fever), one of the best known Icelandic filmmakers, continues to develop documentaries as well as features. He has his own projects bubbling away and is the producer of new docudrama Storm Alerts by Bergur Bernburg, about a mentally fragile academic on the run in Copenhagen. This is billed as a “dramatic journey into the unknown territories of the human mind.”
On average, there will be 6 or 7 new majority Icelandic feature documentaries each year, Guðjónsdóttir confirms.
One goal now is to increase the number of co-productions. Iceland is a partner within the Nordisk Film and TV Fund which supports documentary. The country is also a member of the Nordisk Panorama Forum for Co-financing of Documentaries, another important source of support.
There may already be a strong presence at the spring festivals but some of the best Icelandic titles won’t actually surface until later in the year. Because of the pandemic, Guðjónsdóttir says, “many people are holding back. It is much more interesting and rewarding to be in a physical festival than hybrid [one]…they don’t want to premiere until we are back to a semi-normal.”
