Parents

Black and white, 35 mm
Iceland, 2006, 85 min
Section: Another View

Synopsis

Three lives come together in this black-and-white film about the hopes and anguish which parenthood brings. Married dentist Oscar is bringing up his wife’s two children, but longs for a child of his own. Successful broker Einar doesn’t know what is going on in his life, which is starting to crumble before his very eyes. And Katrin Rose who, after returning from Sweden, wants to win back her 11-year-old son, finds herself back at the starting line. “I was inspired by the working methods of Leigh, Godard and Cassavetes, and even when I was doing the preparatory work for the film Children, I got the theatre group Vesturport to collaborate with me on that as well,” says the director. “The actors were given the task of presenting characters they know from their own lives or loosely based on real people. The following months were spent improvising and doing research in order to build up the characters and develop the plot. We began shooting without any written dialogue, but each actor had a broad sense of his character. The idea was to be, not to act.”

About the director

Ragnar Bragason (b. 1971, Sudavik, Iceland) debuted with the film Fiasco, which won the Jury Prize at the Cairo IFF in 2000 and was also screened at festivals in Toronto, Mannheim, Pusan etc. Parents is a continuation of Bragason’s second feature film Children, which was shown at the San Sebastian IFF in 2006 and became Iceland’s official candidate for the Oscar nominations in the category Best Foreign Language Film. It received a record number of nominations for the Edda award, which is presented by the Icelandic Film and Television Academy. His screenplay The Whisperer (Magaluf) was nominated in 2003 for the Sundance/NHK International Filmmaker Award as Screenplay of the Year.