Jar City

Colour, 35 mm
Iceland, Germany, 2006, 93 min
IP – International premiere
Section: Official Selection - Competition

Synopsis

A desperate man employed in a genetic research institute is looking through records which might be able to explain the origin of his little girl’s brain illness. A parallel storyline develops as detective Erlendur begins investigating the murder of an old man who led a bizarre existence in his murky basement flat. This at first seemingly ordinary case becomes more complex with the mystery surrounding the death of a four-year-old girl thirty years before. Loner Erlendur, trying among other things to sort out his thorny relationship with his drug-addict daughter, is determined to find the murderer no matter what. This Icelandic thriller, which addresses issues related to the abuse of genetic information, is persuasive, above all, for the deftly spun dark and mysterious atmosphere which pervades both gradually interlacing lines of the story. The main role in this film adaptation of the detective novel by Arnaldur Indriðason (published in the CR in 2004) was played by the excellent Ingvar E. Sigurðsson (Angels of the Universe, Falcons and Cold Light).

About the director

Baltasar Kormákur (b. 1966, Reykjavik) graduated from the Drama Academy of Iceland and began working in theatre and film as an actor and director. He became internationally recognised for his performances in the films by his compatriot Fridrik Thór Fridriksson Devil’s Island (1996) and Angels of the Universe (1999). He debuted as a film director, screenwriter and producer with an adaptation of Hallgrímur Helgason’s novel 101 Reykjavik (2000), which won him the Youth Jury Award at the IFF in Locarno, the FIPRESCI prize at the IFF in Thessaloniki and the Discovery Award (ex aequo) in Toronto. Kormákur was a member of the jury at the KVIFF in 2003, whose Horizons section featured his drama The Sea (2002). For this film, which garnered the FIPRESCI prize at the Istanbul IFF, not only did he write the screenplay but he was also its producer via his own company Blueeyes Productions. This was also the case with his crime drama A Little Trip to Heaven, an American coproduction in which he cast Forest Whitaker and Julia Stiles.