29/09/2016 - Iceland’s international film festival will open tonight (29 September) with directors Mehta and Aronofsky and actress Sevigny among the honorary guests

Indo-Canadian writer-director-producer Deepa Mehta, US director Darren Aronofsky and US actress Chloë Sevigny are among the honorary guests at the Reykjavik International Film Festival, which opens tonight (29 September) with late Icelandic-French director Sólveig Anspach’s The Together Project [+see also:
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Mehta, who will give a master class, will receive the festival’s Honorary Achievement Award. Her latest film, The Anatomy of Violence, which explores the brutal gang rape and murder of a 23-year-old woman on a bus in New Delhi in 2012, will have its European premiere after screening at Toronto. She will also present Midnight’s Children [+see also:
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film profile] (2012) and Beeba Boys (2015).

After Noah (2014), Aronofsky now has an untitled drama starring Jennifer Lawrence, Domhnall Gleeson and Michelle Pfeiffer in post-production; the festival has chosen to screen his Black Swan (for which he was nominated for an Oscar for Best Director), The Wrestler and Requiem for a Dream. 

Oscar-nominated for US director Kimberly Peirce’s Boys Don’t Cry (1999), Sevigny recently performed in Swedish director Tomas Alfredson’s The Snowman, which was shot in Norway. Her directorial debut, the short film Kitty, was selected for this year’s Cannes International Film Festival and will also be on show at Reykjavik.

In the programme of 100 films, 11 international directors will be screening their first or second films in New Visions, competing for the top prize, the Golden Puffin. Among the entries are Bulgarian director Ralitza Petrova’s Godless [+see also:
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interview: Ralitza Petrova
film profile], which took home the Golden Leopard at Locarno, Russian director Ivan I Tverdovsky’s Zoology [+see also:
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interview: Ivan I Tverdovsky
film profile], which was awarded at Karlovy Vary, and Swedish director Johannes Nyholm’s The Giant [+see also:
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interview: Johannes Nyholm
film profile], which won the Special Jury Prize at San Sebastián. 

Other sections have selected Danish director Andreas Dalsgaard and Syrian director Obaidah Zytoon’s documentary The War Show [+see also:
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interview: Andreas Dalsgaard
film profile], which was awarded at Venice, Italian director Tizza Covi and Austrian director Rainer Frimmel’s FIPRESCI winner from Locarno, Mister Universo [+see also:
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film profile], and Italian director Gianfranco Rosi’s Fire at Sea [+see also:
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interview: Gianfranco Rosi
film profile], which will close the festival. The latter collected the Golden Bear at this year’s Berlinale.

A small country with a population of 330,000, Iceland produces up to six features annually: local shorts have been a main attraction at the festival since it opened in 2004, and this year, 18 Icelandic filmmakers have entered the competition, where a jury will award the winner. The films cover the whole gamut of fiction and documentary, and tackle everything from friendship, parenthood and life without technology to Icelandic snowboarders and réttir, an Icelandic tradition of sheep gathering in autumn.