How Ice­land became Hollywood’s go-to sci-fi setting

Ear­ly in 2018 I was invit­ed to Reyk­javik, Ice­land, to attend the fourth edi­tion of the Stock­fish Film Fes­ti­val. The press attaché thank­ful­ly answered a key ques­tion before I need­ed to ask it: stock­fish is dried, salt­ed cod which is export­ed en masse to Nige­ria, a coun­try which, appar­ent­ly, can’t get enough of this local delicacy.

The con­cept behind the fes­ti­val is that they want to make film become Iceland’s pri­ma­ry export, and it cer­tain­ly seems like they’re avid­ly mov­ing in that direc­tion. The love­ly Bíó Paradís cin­e­ma act­ed as the festival’s main hub, smack dab in cen­tre of town and a hive of local cinephile activ­i­ty. It boasts a large lounge area whose walls are dec­o­rat­ed with alter­na­tive film poster designs, each one cre­at­ed by a local artist. This is a project that is the off­shoot of a reg­u­lar screen­ing series at the venue.

Many of the films pro­grammed for the fes­ti­val were Euro­pean titles that were steadi­ly doing the glob­al rounds. This was a chance for local audi­ences to pre­view the year in art­house ahead of time, and screen­ings duly drew robust crowds. Yet the func­tion of Stock­fish appeared to be more sub­tly expan­sive – an attempt to pin­point Iceland’s cur­rent­ly loca­tion on the glob­al cin­e­ma map. The films almost seemed like dec­o­ra­tive addi­tions to a broad­er cause. Their total embrace of Hol­ly­wood extend­ed to the local restau­rants, as the one spot that every­one would rec­om­mend with­out fail is a street cor­ner hot-dog stand called Bae­jarins Bez­tu Pyl­sur (update: they were very good dogs).

Still, domes­tic pro­duc­tion appears to be in fine fet­tle: Ísold Uggadóttir’s And Breathe Nor­mal­ly is a beau­ti­ful­ly judged immi­gra­tion tale of the unlike­ly friend­ship that forms between an immi­grant woman attempt­ing to sneak through Reyk­javik and the bor­der guard who notices that her papers are invalid; Woman at War by Benedikt Erlings­son is a fine fol­low-up to his 2013 fea­ture Of Hors­es and Men, fol­low­ing a rebel­lious lon­er as she ral­lies against indus­tri­al­i­sa­tion in order to pre­serve the breath­tak­ing land­scape; there’s also the won­der­ful short fea­ture, The Day the Beans Ran Out, by Guðný Rós Þórhalls­dót­tir, a pitch-per­fect zom­bie paean to the pas­tel-hued, geo­met­ri­cal­ly pris­tine world of Wes Anderson.

Yet it seems as if Ice­land is look­ing to forge a deep­er con­nec­tion with film, and exploit the country’s vast nat­ur­al resources in ways that reach beyond prop­ping up home­grown tal­ent. There was much eager talk of how Reykjavik’s favourite son, Bal­tasar Kor­mákur, who divides his time between Hol­ly­wood (2 Guns, Ever­est, Con­tra­band) and home (Jar City, The Deep), is in the process of set­ting up a major stu­dio space just 15 min­utes from the cap­i­tal. Hand­i­ly named Reyk­javik Stu­dios, its aim is to allow local direc­tors access to a broad­er array of film­mak­ing resources, while also mak­ing it eas­i­er for for­eign pro­duc­tions to form a robust base on the island. Ear­ly images of the space present it as a gigan­tic hangar in which dreams can both land and take off.

The cul­ture is infused with a cin­e­mat­ic her­itage. If you wan­der down the city’s main drag, every oth­er build­ing is an unof­fi­cial ​‘tourist office’ offer­ing excur­sions allow­ing vis­i­tors to pay homage to shows like Game of Thrones and, more recent­ly, films like Blade Run­ner 2049, Inter­stel­lar and Rogue One: A Star Wars Sto­ry. There’s even an unof­fi­cial Big Lebows­ki-themed bar. Yet if you have the chance to head out and see the stun­ning land­scape out­side of the cap­i­tal first hand, then take any excuse you need. Even dri­ving for a few min­utes beyond the city lim­its, or hop­ping on to a sub­ur­ban bus, it becomes appar­ent how unique and pho­to­genic the vol­canic land­scape is. How best to take advan­tage of it all for the sake of cinema?

The real­i­ty is, film­mak­ers haven’t always been able to take advan­tage of these stun­ning back­drops, and it’s usu­al­ly for banal, logis­ti­cal rea­sons. If a large scale Hol­ly­wood pro­duc­tion with a crew of 100 needs to come and film a sequence by a seclud­ed water­fall or inlet, and the local guest­house offers room for 30, then how to make it work? The local film indus­try is now work­ing as a facil­i­ta­tor and an enabler – so flex­ing cre­ative mus­cles in a slight­ly dif­fer­ent man­ner. For a sit­u­a­tion like this, they might be able to pro­vide mobile lodg­ings, or extra tech­ni­cians to help ease the strain of a loca­tion shoot. They have so much to give, and now they have a prac­ti­cal way to give it.

At Stock­fish, the esteemed movie loca­tion man­ag­er Emma Pill was invit­ed over to lead a pan­el dis­cus­sion about her work which involves find­ing real back­drops for fan­tas­ti­cal sto­ries. Denis Vil­leneuve gave her the task of find­ing a red desert for the open­ing scenes of Blade Run­ner 2049, where Ryan Gosling’s K tracks down Dave Bautista’s Sap­per Mor­ton in a seclud­ed shack. After search­ing every­where, she even­tu­al­ly set­tled on Ice­land, and Vil­leneuve was thrilled that he could realise his vision so closely.

Attend­ing the pan­el were rep­re­sen­ta­tives from all the var­i­ous regions of Ice­land. All had ques­tions they were fir­ing at Pill with regard to how best they could make her job eas­i­er. She right­ly remind­ed the audi­ence that it would be phys­i­cal­ly impos­si­ble to vis­it and pho­to­graph every geo­graph­ic loca­tion of inter­est, so they could help her by mak­ing detailed land­scape port­fo­lios them­selves. By the end, Pill had essen­tial­ly instruct­ed them to pro­duce detailed lists of places they think could be of inter­est, mak­ing her job a lit­tle eas­i­er and also mean­ing that some of those hard-to-find places are nudged clos­er to the fore by the peo­ple with the detailed local knowledge.

Stock­fish did feel a lit­tle more like a cul­tur­al expo than a tra­di­tion­al film fes­ti­val, but some­times that’s cer­tain­ly no bad thing. The coun­try scored one of their biggest over­seas suc­cess­es in 2015 with Grí­mur Hákonarson’s rus­tic dra­ma of rival farm­ers, Rams, and there is already con­sid­er­able buzz for the director’s fol­low-up, The Coun­ty, due in 2019. As films about the explo­ration of des­o­late plan­ets with spec­tac­u­lar land­scapes con­tin­ue to rise in pop­u­lar­i­ty, there’s no doubt that films crews from Europe and Hol­ly­wood would be will­ing to make that jour­ney for that edge of authenticity.

Find out more about the Stock­fish Film Fes­ti­val at stock​fish​fes​ti​val​.is