30/07/2024 - Five projects took part in the workshop tutored by Marta Andreu, including the new film by Gústav Geir Bollason and producer Guðrún Edda Thorhannesdóttir’s first directing effort

The sixth edition of the IceDocs - Iceland Documentary Film Festival, which took place 17-21 July, included a compact and well-designed industry section aimed at both local filmmakers and international industry professionals. 

In addition to talks by IDFA Youth Competition programmer Niki Padidar, French producer Victor Ede, Slovenian director Petra Seliškar, Autlook Filmsales’ Stephanie Fuchs, Macedonian filmmaker Kumjana Novakova and former commissioning editor at the Danish Film Institute Helle Hansen, who also moderated other sessions, the programme featured the fourth edition of the workshop for local documentary filmmakers, sponsored by the Icelandic Film Centre, organised by filmmaker Yrsa Roca Fannberg (The Last Autumn [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile]) and tutored by filmmaker and producer Marta Andreu. It welcomed five projects, which included the first documentary feature by experienced producer Guðrún Edda Thorhannesdóttir, who among other films worked on Benedikt Erlingsson’s Of Horses and Men [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Benedikt Erlingsson
film profile], and Structure [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] director Gústav Geir Bollason.

The second phase of the workshop will take place in Reykjavik in September.

The projects:

Poetry of Movement - Guðrún Edda Thorhannesdóttir
The film follows a grandmother, a mother and a daughter who are exploring how their shared experience with dance and movement impacts emotional intelligence and personal expression. 

Shadowline - Gústav Geir Bollason 
The director is back with another experimental project, described as a “floating image” which drifts between unknown worlds and distant locations on the earth's global grid, to explore water itself and all bodies of water, as well as the recent changes in them.

Passamynd - Sigurður Unnar Birgisson
The artist and photographer’s documentary centres on the fact that when men turn 70, they must renew their driver’s license photograph; but when the photographer starts making inquiries about his subjects' retirement, the impersonal nature of identity photos is transformed as portraits of their lives are revealed. 

Ukulellur (working title) - Elísabet Thoroddsen
The author and filmmaker’s project tells the story of 13 LGBT+ women aged 30 to 70 who form the titular ukulele band for fun, but things turn serious when they are booked for their first gig and realise they don't know how to play their newly purchased instruments. Nevertheless, the gigs keep rolling in and they find themselves creating new songs and lyrics focusing on LGBTQI+ issues, the menopause and the invisibilisation of mature women in society. 

Yowl! – Jón Bjarki Magnússon, Hlín Ólafsdóttir
The director teams up again with producer Hlín Ólafsdóttir after their collaboration on Half Elf [+see also:
trailer
film profile], except this time around they are co-directing. In this new film, migratory birds show the way to foreign shores and remind us of how small the individual is compared to nature and today’s biggest challenges, where everything flows and connects, like the driftwood from Siberia that ends up in the Icelandic Westfjords, or a bottom troll ripping a coral reef apart, while a whimbrel lands in the Canary Island and an older Icelander comes ashore on the west coast of Africa.