03/04/2026 - The head of Iceland’s arthouse cinema festival talks about developing a sustainable funding model and becoming a top meeting place for film professionals from across the North Atlantic

The 12th annual Stockfish Film & Industry Festival (19-29 March) has wrapped at its home base of Reykjavík’s Bío Paradís, Iceland’s first and only arthouse cinema (see the news). The venue played host to screenings of Icelandic short films alongside international features, classics and more across the 11-day festival. We sat down with Stockfish managing director Dögg Mósesdóttir to learn more about the event’s economic and programmatic journey.

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Cineuropa: Stockfish has recently experimented with different ticketing models to bring audiences to the cinemas. What does that look like this year, and how do you see it shifting in the next few editions?
Dögg Mósesdóttir: We offered free entry to the whole festival for our tenth anniversary, which was two years ago, and that went really well. We had double the audience that we had before. I was hired in January 2025, and we wondered whether we could do some kind of hybrid, pay-what-you-can model. However, people didn’t really respond to that last year – maybe our system isn’t built for that. This year, we were really underfunded, so we couldn’t afford to have free tickets. People are just coming less and less to the cinemas in general, but we know there is interest, as we saw it when the numbers doubled. We have also thought about offering some sort of free or reduced pass for students and young people. The question is: how can we make the festival sustainable and also bring audiences without it costing them too much money? That’s what we’re looking into for the coming years.

From a programming perspective, what is new this year, and how does it align with your continued vision for the festival?
The children’s programme is new this year – we didn’t do it last year, because we had very little time. There’s been a huge response to that, so we will definitely continue with that and expand it. We also want to focus more on youth. We have a small programme for winning films from another festival that’s for youngsters, but we want to serve them even better. We had a lot more international guests this year as well as an additional workshop and a bigger lab, the North Atlantic Story Circle. We want to expand on all of this in the years to come so that Stockfish becomes a place for sharing experiences and knowledge within the film industry.

From my understanding, the concept of North Atlantic cinema – referring collectively to Icelandic, Greenlandic and Faroese filmmaking – is quite new. How do you see the festival’s role in shaping this idea?
There are the European and northern European markets, but this is a newly formed focus. Iceland is so well situated in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, between two continents. We really want to be the centre where filmmakers can come together and meet: those from the Arctic, North America and northern Europe. That’s really one step towards a bigger plan that we have for the next few editions – that people can come to Iceland for the festival and discover new talent from these places, focusing on smaller countries that are fighting for their languages and sovereignty. Especially in today’s geopolitical climate, we want to empower and grow the connection between them so that we stand stronger, together.

Speaking about young talent, the festival has a very strong emphasis on the Icelandic shorts programme. How do you see Stockfish’s role in fostering new talent?
I think it was beautiful at the awards ceremony, where we gave out awards to younger people – they’re the next generation of filmmakers. We also gave out the Eva Maria Daniels Award for Vital Filmmaking, which is a reminder that life is short – [Daniels] was my age when she passed away. We really have to seize the moment and make films. The short-film programme is one of the strongest selections I’ve seen in years, and I had a short-film festival for 15 years. At the same time, we’re facing cuts in the industry, so we’re worried what their future will look like.

An ongoing conversation at the festival’s industry days has been the state of the Icelandic film industry as it relates to funding. How does this fit into the festival’s outlook?
The festival is part of the whole ecosystem, and we are backed by all of the filmmakers’ associations – the directors, producers and film workers. That’s important because we also create the platform where we can have these kinds of discussions, and we can gain more awareness of how the industry works. Every association has a voice within the festival.

We talk a lot about how the government doesn’t really understand how the film industry works. It may seem like we’re just always asking for more money, but the people who actually gain the most from Icelandic filmmaking are the Icelandic taxpayers. They’re the ones who get money back indirectly through the tourism industry stimulated by [people seeing Iceland in films] and through the employment created because of all the services that the industry needs. The taxpayer gets 6.8 times back for each króna. We call it grants, but it’s an investment. You have to kind of go all in because otherwise, the investment disappears if projects are funded and then the funding is suddenly cut. We have to explain this to every government, and it’s exhausting to lobby all the time. It would be great if the government had a better understanding of how things work and how they can benefit the most from the industry. The taxpayers are the best investors for the film industry, and the film industry is the best investment for them.