23/11/2012 - While Icelandic films travel to Ireland and Italy, the Icelandic Film Centre looks forward to extra government money, which will bring the situation back to normal

While Icelandic film programmes are on show at the Subtitle Festival in Ireland and Cineporto in Rome, the Icelandic government and coalition parties have announced a new financial plan to create jobs and stimulate investment in expanding industrial sectors, which will bring the funding for cinema back to normal.

The first edition of Subtitle in Kilkenny - Ireland's newest festival, focusing on European films from countries with a limited production, unspooling between November 19-25 - will screen an Icelandic New Wave programme, including Óskar Thór Axelsson's Black's Game [+see also:
trailer
film profile], Hafsteinn Gunnar Sigurdsson's Either Way [+see also:
trailer
interview: Hafstein Gunnar Sigurdsson
interview: Hilmar Gudjônsson - Shootin…
film profile], Óskar Jónasson's Reykjavík Rotterdam [+see also:
trailer
film profile] and Rúnar Rúnarsson's Volcano [+see also:
trailer
film profile].

Four Steps Into the Great North, a focus on Icelandic Cinema which was recently on show at the 9th Reykjavik International Film Festival, will unspool at the 25th Cineporto event in Rome between November 29-December 2, where Sigurdsson and Fridrik Thór Fridriksson (Mamma Gógó [+see also:
trailer
film profile]) will introduce their films.

Having already increased film support from €3.1 million to €4.3 million in 2015, the government's new proposition will allocate an extra €2.9 million annually in three years for the Icelandic Film Centre: "And if it passes Parliament, we will be back on track - even a bit better off than before the financial crash in 2008, although we still suffer from a low currency rate," said the centre's CEO Laufey Gudjónsdóttir.

After launching nine new films in 2010 and eight in 2011, the small Nordic European country at the confluence of the North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans, with a population of only 319,575, this year premiered three features and a minority co-production, with three or four in the pipeline for 2013.