26/09/2008

Baltasar Kormákur’s White Night Wedding [+see also:
trailer
film profile] and Bent Hamer’s O'Horten [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] have been chosen to represent respectively Iceland and Norway for the 2009 Oscar nominations in the Best Foreign Language Film category.

White Night Wedding was selected by the members of the Icelandic Film and TV Academy. The film, loosely based on the Checkhov play Ivanov, is also Iceland’s contender for the Nordic Council Film Prize 2008, to be announced on October 15.

The light comedy had its international premiere in Toronto’s World Contemporary Cinema section and is this year’s biggest Icelandic hit, with over 50,000 admissions at home. Celluloid Dreams is handling world sales. Kormákur was also chosen as Iceland’s Oscar hopeful last year with his dark thriller Jar City [+see also:
trailer
film profile].

Hamer’s compassionate and humorous look at old age in O’Horten was first shown to international audiences in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard last May and has since won several awards, including the Norwegians Critics’ Prize.

The film was sold to more than 35 territories by Munich-based The Match Factory. Sony Picture Classics will release it in the US in February 2009, just in time for the Academy Awards ceremony on Sunday, February 22. Hamer’s previous film, Kitchen Stories, was Norway’s Oscar entry in 2003.