12/09/2007

Baltasar Kormákur’s Jar City [+see also:
trailer
film profile], winner of a Grand Prix Crystal Globe in Karlovy Vary last July, has been sold by Trust Film Sales to IFC for North American distribution during the Toronto Film Festival (September 6-15).

The Icelandic thriller, the highest ever grossing local film in Iceland (over 80,000 admissions), was acquired by IFC after successful screenings in Telluride (US) and at the beginning of the Toronto Film Festival, where the film is part of the Contemporary World Cinema programme.

The independent US distribution outfit will release Jar City through its day-and-date label First Take, which releases movies simultaneously in cinemas and on video on demand. Previous Nordic films acquired by IFC include Susanne Bier’s After the Wedding [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Sisse Graum Jørgensen
interview: Susanne Bier
film profile], Aki Kaurismäki’s Lights in the Dusk [+see also:
trailer
film profile] and Lars von Trier’s The Boss of it All [+see also:
trailer
film profile].

Kormákur’s fourth feature film is based on the novel Mýrin by successful Icelandic author Arnaldur Indriðason, “It was the first time I read a crime novel that I believed in, and it had believable premises for Iceland,” said Kormákur, who said he wanted to direct a true Icelandic thriller, a genre almost never touched upon in the country. “Connecting with the audience is important to me but I also tried to make Jar City an art-house film because it travels much better that way”.

Jar City was produced by Kormákur’s production outfit Blue Eyes Productions with German co-producers Oliver Huzly and Reinhard Kloos (Bavaria Film), and Danish executive producer Kim Magnusson (Nordisk Film). Kormákur will soon return in front of the camera to play the lead in Rotterdam-Reykjavik, a new film by his counterpart Oskar Jónasson (Remote Control). ‘It will be a smuggler comedy about petty thieves,” he said.