Tökur eru hafnar við Mývatn á Northern Comfort, fyrstu bíómynd Hafsteins Gunnars Sigurðssonar á ensku. Grímar Jónsson framleiðir fyrir Netop Films. Hinn kunni breski leikari Timothy Spall fer með eitt aðalhlutverka ásamt Sverri Guðnasyni og Lydia Leonard.
Í fréttatilkynningu segir:
Principal photography has begun by lake Mývatn in Iceland on Northern Comfort, a comedy in which a motley group of people with a chronic fear of flying are stranded in the wintry north. Shooting will move to Reykjavik later in February and will conclude in the UK and France in March.
The film is directed by Hafsteinn Gunnar Sigurdsson, whose last film Under The Tree had its world premiere in Orizzonti at the Venice Film Festival in 2017 and was widely distributed around the world. His first feature Either Way (2011) was remade by David Gordon Green in the US as Prince Avalanche.
Sigurdsson wrote the screenplay for Northern Comfort with Halldor Laxness Halldorsson and Tobias Munthe.
Tony-nominated actress Lydia Leonard, who heads the cast in the upcoming Amazon Prime/AMC series Call My Agent, plays Sarah, an English businesswoman with a pathological fear of flying who is gearing herself up for an overseas holiday with her new boyfriend Tom (Emun Elliott). She enrols herself in a fear of flying class and her group – Which includes Edward (BAFTA-nominated and Cannes Best Actor award-winner Spall), Alfons (Gudnason), Coco (Rumpf) and team leader Charles (Manyonda) – is sent on a test trip to Reykjavik, Iceland.
Rob Delaney (Catastrophe, Deadpool 2) plays a cargo pilot who flirts with Lydia, while Icelandic star Björn Hlynur Haraldsson (Lamb, The Witcher) plays a dotcom magnate who gets entangled with Alfons and Coco.
Grimar Jonsson is producing the film through his Netop Films, while Mike Goodridge of Good Chaos (UK) and Sol Bondy and Fred Burle of One Two Films (Germany) are co-producers.
The film was financed in association with the Icelandic Film Centre, Nordisk Film & TV Fond, Medienboard Berlin Brandenburg, the Icelandic National Broadcasting Service RUV, ZDF/ARTE, Creative Europe and HES Honest Equity Strategies.
Paris-based Charades is handling world sales. Film4 has UK free TV rights. Scanbox has Nordic rights, Weltkino has rights in Germany and SENA will handle distribution in Iceland.
The film was developed with the backing of Film4 in the UK, and financed in association with Rocket Science. Christoph Lange of HES and Thorsten Schumacher of Rocket Science are executive producers.
“Northern Comfort is a comedy that takes us on an unexpected journey with an unlikely group of characters whose paths would never have crossed had it not been for the fear they all share,” says Sigurdsson. “The theme of managing fear and vulnerability lies at the core of the story. These very human experiences are rich foundations for all the things I love to see in films: absurdist comedy, human drama and colourful characters that take you on a visual and cinematic journey.”
Timothy Spall is a celebrated, multi-award winning actor with credits including Secrets And Lies, The King’s Speech, the Harry Potter series, and Pablo Larrain’s recent hit Spencer. He won the best actor at Cannes for Mr Turner in 2014 and has five BAFTA nominations.
Sverrir Gudnason is an Icelandic/Swedish actor who won worldwide attention for playing Bjorn Borg in Borg Vs McEnroe. His other credits include The Girl In The Spider’s Web, Viggo Mortensen’s directorial debut Falling and Mikhail Marcimain’s Call Girl.
Simon Manyonda is a British actor who plays Lucius Fox in the hit DC Entertainment series Pennyworth; his other credits include The Witches, In Fabric, The Current War and Richard Eyre’s TV production of King Lear with Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson.
Ella Rumpf is a fast-rising Swiss actress who won acclaim for her performances in Julia Ducourneau’s Raw, Jakob Lass’ Tiger Girl and Petra Volpe’s The Divine Order. She recently appeared in season three of hit HBO show Succession and shot a lead role with Ansel Elgort and Ken Watanabe in the new HBO Max Michael Mann series Tokyo Vice.
