WHITE_NIGHT_WEDDING_A/W 28/8/08 17:16 Page 1 A film by Baltasar Kormákur Iceland - 2008 - 98 min - Colour - 2:35 - Dolby SRD - Icelandic World Sales Celluloid Dreams 2 rue Turgot, 75009 Paris, France T : + 33 (0) 1 4970 0370 F : + 33 (0) 1 4970 0371 [email protected] www.celluloid-dreams.com SYNOPSIS Jon, a middle-aged professor is going to get married tomorrow, for the second time, to one of his ex-students half his age. But it’s not all roses. Firstly, there’s his cranky mother-in-law- to-be who violently opposes the marriage and who demands repayment of Jon’s loan before the wedding night. Secondly, his plans to build a golf course on the little island of Flatey where they live aren’t going at all to plan. Thirdly his extremely drunk best man is on the loose without any shoes and lastly, the continual presence of his emotional first wife is haunting his every move... When the guests start flocking to the island, Jon starts getting cold feet... After a very long night of drinking and thinking, will Jon be able to make it to the church on time? DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT It’s been ten years since I first started thinking about adapting Chekhov’s Ivanov into a feature film. When I first read it, I immediately sensed that Iceland would somehow be the perfect place to set such a film. Ivanov tells the story of a man in a small, rural community, waiting for official grants to save his farm. I felt that the play had endless options to work from. In recent years some of the stage performances I have directed have been quite successful. Subsequently I’ve been approached a number of times and asked to adapt those performances for film or TV. For some reason, this has never really appealed to me. Possibly because when you’ve made something that’s right for the stage, it’s difficult to create the same overall success in another format. I’ve seen this done a few times but it hasn’t really added anything to the initial experience. What appealed to me, on the other hand, was to explore the option of simultaneously developing a screenplay and a theatre piece, based on the same story, as it enables people to experience one story in very different ways. That’s what we did and it turned out to be a great experience. Having worked both as a film and stage director in recent years, I’ve discovered that I really appreciate the advantages of working in the theatre. I’ve developed a certain technique in the adaptation process that I think is a much more open and creative method than what is standard when developing a film. Actors are involved in the project from the initial stages and help create the piece as we go along. The actor becomes more involved in creating his character and is much more likely to do a good job in the end. In 2007, the director of the National Theatre, Tinna Gunnlaugsdottir, asked me to direct a play for their Christmas premiere. We discussed my ideas on Ivanov and I explained that I would be willing to direct the play only if she could provide me with some actors and crew members. She agreed and in January 2008, I was given a group of nine actors, a production designer and a costume designer to work with. The plan was to study the play to see if it could be successfully adapted for the screen, with the intention to start filming that summer and to start the stage rehearsals later in the year. We worked intensely for four weeks on the project and ended up taking a three-day trip to the small island of Flatey, West-Iceland where I was certain to find the perfect shooting location. Following this session, I sat down with my co-writer Ólafur Egill Egilsson, who is incidentally also one of the cast members, and we ended up coming up with the script for White Night Wedding. Why Ivanov? Ivanov (Jon in the film) tells the story of an extremely egocentric middle-aged man, stuck in a mid- life crisis. Like so many others, he looks for salvation through a relationship with a young woman, just like a vampire seeking energy from the blood of a young maiden. As we all know, this is just a temporary solution. Young women cannot do much for guys who are suffering from desperation and are completely unhappy with themselves. Just like with alcoholics, who avoid facing their problems, the people around Jon, with good intentions, start to take responsibility for him. Thus a vicious circle begins. Sasha (Thora in the film) tries the hardest. She feels that you need to strive for love. She wants love to be “active.” The play is full of interesting characters that have been wonderful to get to know, to explore and to analyze. Chekhov’s characters are extremely delightful with all their flaws and problems. Ordinary people, yet so alive and bursting on the inside. One doesn’t often come across such fascinating characters in Icelandic screenplays and it was fun to work with and study “his people”. Chekhov has a universal appeal because his plays deal with characters that most people can relate to and the time or the period they are set in is basically irrelevant. One of greatest challenges in adapting a story into a screenplay is to avoid making the protagonist so despicable or unattractive they become unbearable. However, the character needs to keep his flaws. If not, the audience fails to completely empathize with the character. That is, if the audience is prepared to see itself in a critical light. I’ve often explored and worked with such intriguing characters before, the main challenges being Ibsen’s Peer Gynt and the protagonist in my first feature film, 101 Reykjavik. Another interesting aspect with Ivanov was the thin line between the melodrama and comedy, almost a farce at times. I would categorize the film, White Night Wedding as a dramedy or a comedy drama. I was undoubtedly inspired by Almodóvar and Woody Allen throughout this process. Icelandic “nature hippies”, who now in their fifties have turned more towards capitalism, bear a slight resemblance to old aristocrats who have been forced to adapt to new ways. Their new lifestyle can be described as “Right wing green”. The Mecca of this group is Flatey; the small island with all its old houses, which can only be maintained by the rich. A ferry sails in once a day, there is no telephone communication, no television, just the birds, nature and that’s it. Many of the old hippies are very resourceful in finding subsidies and grants to maintain the old houses (most of them have friends in committees and in the city councils!) as there is not really a profit to be gained by this activity. The island of Flatey is of course an extremely beautiful place, especially in the white nights of summer when the midnight sun briefly kisses the ocean before rising again for a new day. BIOGRAPHY - Baltasar Kormákur Actor / Writer / Director / Producer Baltasar Kormákur was born in Reykjavik, Iceland in 1966. He graduated as an actor from Iceland’s National Academy of Fine Arts in 1990 and was signed on by the National Theatre of Iceland right after his graduation where he worked as one of the leading young performing artists until 1997. The last two years of his assignment he also directed some ambitious productions after having produced and directed immensely popular, independent stage productions alongside his work at the theatre. Baltasar wrote the screenplay, directed, acted in and produced the film 101 Reykjavik in the year 2000, and after the international success of the film, Baltasar started Blueeyes Productions. Since then his main focus has been on film as writer/director/producer. His films 101 Reykjavik (2000), The Sea (2002), A Little Trip to Heaven (2005) and Jar City (2006) have won many international awards. His latest film, White Night Wedding, was released in Iceland on January 18, 2008 and was an instant hit. Cellloid-Dreams picked it up for world sales and will launch the film in Toronto in September 2008 - Currently he is directing Run for her life, a US feature film, starring Dermot Mulroney, Diane Kruger, Sam Shepard, Rosanna Arquette, Vincent Perez and Jordi Mollá. The film is a co-production between the Los Angeles based 26 Films and Blueeyes Productions. Baltasar was named along with directors such as Christopher Nolan and Alejandro G. Inárritu as “one of the 10 most exciting new talents” in Variety L.A. 2001 January issue. Baltasar is a writer, director and one of the producers of A Little Trip to Heaven (2005) which stars Forest Whitaker, Julia Stiles and Peter Coyote. Jar City (Mýrin) opened in Iceland on October 20, 2006 and received fantastic reviews and instantly became a box office hit. It ended up being the biggest film of the year 2006 in Iceland and the best box office film ever. Jar City was selected into competition at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival 2007 and won the main prize, The Crystal Globe. Also selected by Telluroid and Toronto Film Fest 2007, Pusan, London Film Festival along with over 50 other festivals and has received great reviews. IFC acquired the US distribution rights in Toronto and so did Memento for France and The Works in the UK. Jar City has been circulating in appx 50-60 festivals from October 2007 and is already tightly booked for festivals well into the year 2008.