I used to sail a lot in all kinds of weather, competing on small sailboats in the ocean. And I travel a lot in Iceland on horses every summer, through the wild areas where there’s no inhabitants and there are volcanoes. Baltasar Kormakur Read Quote
If you make a film too American, it won’t travel. It will have no life outside of its own country. Baltasar Kormakur Read Quote
In the case of ‘The Deep,’ because of the people involved, the talent and the real lives of people who died, I wanted to make the most honest film I could. And sometimes that’s the best way to go: Just make the best version of the film you can. Baltasar Kormakur Read Quote
Throughout the history of Iceland, men have been lost at sea; every family in Iceland is connected to that kind of story. Baltasar Kormakur Read Quote
I think my sweet spot is to make personal films on not-too-big budgets and also make other people’s films, bringing productions to Iceland, upping the business here. Baltasar Kormakur Read Quote
When I made ‘101 Reykjavik,’ people talked about ‘Almodovar on ice.’ When I made ‘The Sea,’ people referenced Bergman. Baltasar Kormakur Read Quote
I’m the first Icelandic director who started working on U.S. movies. There are others behind me now, but it’s like when Bjork opened the door for Icelandic musicians to work abroad. We’re such a closed-off country, but Bjork broke the spell. And I’m glad it was a woman who did it. She showed us we could break this barrier. Baltasar Kormakur Read Quote
The thing about Iceland is that we are trapped there anyway, all of us. We have been trapped there for thousands of years. Baltasar Kormakur Read Quote
People talk about Hollywood as a myth, but in reality, when you make Icelandic movies and you want to get them distributed in the U.S., you’re not really working with Hollywood. The movies I’ve been making, the first one I made, I made it with Working Title, but it was financed through Universal, so it became a Hollywood production. Baltasar Kormakur Read Quote
I’ve always looked at filmmaking as a lifestyle. There is no decision of when you go to work. It’s a way of life: you’re thinking about scripts; you see things and think, ‘That could be interesting’… I don’t think about my work as, ‘Today I’ll work on this, this and that.’ It just comes to me. Baltasar Kormakur Read Quote