Director: Baltasar Kormákur
Country: Iceland
Year: 2002
Runtime: 110 minutes
Language: Icelandic and English with English Subtitles
Awards: Edda Awards, Iceland - Best Actor/Best
Actress/Best Director/Best Screenplay/Best Supporting Actor/Best
Supporting Actress/Film of the Year, Istanbul International Film
Festival FIPRESCI Award, Tromsø International Film Festival -
Audience Award
In Iceland, a wealthy, aging, and above-all despotic patriarch summons
his grown children to a family reunion in which he intends to tell them
his plans for the family fishery. The eldest son--who has bought into
globalization--thinks the business should be sold to a distributor; the
father is adamant that the business remain family-owned. The other
children are dominated by feelings of greed or recriminations based on
a shared past. And what a past! Below a seemingly tranquil surface lie
long years of paternal and filial failure, incest, and resentment of
the father’s second wife, who replaced the children’s mother even
before their mother’s death. The result is a Walspurgisnacht. Hafio is
a direct descendent Ingmar Bergman out of Ibsen and every bit as
powerful but coming decades after Bergman’s heyday. This Icelandic saga
is able to add geopolitics to the mix.
~ Nick Salerno
Principal Cast: Gunnar Eyjólfsson, Hilmir Snaer
Gudnason, Hélène de Fougerolles, Elva Osk
Olafsdóttir, Sigurdur Skúlason
Writers: Baltasar Kormákur, Olafur Haukur
Símonarson
Producers: Jean-François Fonlupt, Baltasar
Kormákur
Cinematographer: Jean-Louis Vialard
Film Editor: Valdís Óskarsdóttir
Official website: http://www.thesea.is/