26/09/2011

Iceland has 130 volcanoes, and one of the most active for the time being (the only one) – Icelandic director Rúnar Rúnarsson’s feature debut, Volcano [+see also:
trailer
film profile] – will represent the country in the race for an Academy Award nomination as Best Foreign-Language Feature. Volcano is competing in the New Horizons sidebar of the Reykjavik International Film Festival, which started last week (September 22). Icelandic actor Theódór Júlíusson, who plays the lead, won Best Actor at the Eurasia International Film Festival in Almaty, Kazakhstan, which ended on September 24).

Acclaimed for his award-winning shorts, including the Oscar-nominated The Last Farm, Rúnarsson portrays a retired janitor trying to readjust to the rest of his life. He is estranged from his family, has hardly any friends, and realises that he must deal both with his choices of the past and difficulties of the present to embrace the future.

Shot last autumn on domestic locations as an Icelandic-Danish co-production and launched in Directors’ Fortnight at this year’s Cannes International Film Festival, Volcano stars Theódór Júlíusson, Margrét Helga Jóhannsdóttir, Elma Lísa Gunnarsdóttir and Thorsteinn Bachmann.

Produced by Thor S Sigurjónsson, Skúli Fr Malmquist and Egil Dennerline for local Zik Zak Filmworks, with Denmark’s Fine & Mellow Productions A/S, and supported both by the Icelandic Film Centre and New Danish Screen (as well as the Icelandic Ministry of Industry, Energy and Tourism), the film is sold internationally by TrustNordisk.

On an extensive festival tour after Cannes, Rúnarsson – who is a graduate from the Danish National Film School in Copenhagen – won half a Best Director’s prize at the Translyvania International Film Festival in Cluj. After, among others, Munich, Karlovy Vary, Haugesund and Toronto, the film will screen at the Chicago Film Festival from October 6-20.