10/10/2007

Star Icelandic actor/director Baltasar Kormákur is currently editing his latest project, White Night Wedding, loosely based on the Anton Chekhov play Ivanov.

Kormákur shot the film over a few weeks on location in Iceland with an all-Icelandic cast and crew right after collecting the Grand Prix Crystal Globe in Karlovy Vary last July for his thriller Jar City [+see also:
trailer
film profile]. White Night Wedding was developed simultaneously for stage and screen.

The play will have its theatre premiere on December 26 at Reykjavik’s Icelandic National Theatre – where Kormákur made his acting debut in the early 1990s – while Sena Film will release the feature film version in January 2008.

Thirty-five year-old Ivanov was once an energetic entrepreneur but is now burnt out – he cannot muster the energy or the will to undertake even the smallest tasks. He pays no attention to his sick wife, and is on the verge of sinking into the depths of despair. But then Sasha, a young and beautiful student, falls deeply in love with Ivanov and takes it upon herself to save him.

The €2m film was produced by Kormákur’s company Blueeyes Productions with support from the Icelandic Film Centre. The film’s producer, Agnes Johansen, said she is still negotiating international distribution rights on the title.

Jar City, Iceland’s entry for this year’s Oscar nominations, is continuing its successful festival tour and Trust Film Sales, which closed deals with IFC in the US and Memento in France, is in final negotiations with several other territories including the Benelux, Italy, Spain, Eastern Europe, the UK, Australia and Japan.