TRIBUTES AND RETROSPECTIVES

Double Take

Woman at War

Kona fer í stríð

Benedikt Erlingsson
2018 - Iceland / France / Ukraine - 1h41

Screenings : wednesday 24 - 2:00 pm - Pathé - 1 - presented by Dominique Terasas - film teacher friday 26 - 10:30 am - Pathé - 2

Halla declares war on the local aluminium industry which is disfiguring the countryside. She takes many risks in protecting the Icelandic Highlands. But the situation could change with the arrival in her life of a young orphaned girl …

Before the audience and critical success of Kona fer í strí? (Woman at War), Benedikt Erlingsson was already recognised as one of the leading Icelandic theatre directors of the past decade. While Erlingsson was in a residency working with other directors developing their respective projects, they were suddenly interrupted in their work. “We were talking about our creative process, and then in came these very serious people from the World Bank Group. They wanted us to talk about climate change, but you know how it is – artists don't like to be told what to do. We promised to educate ourselves, and when I came home, that's what I did, finally realising the gravity of this matter. I used to be an activist when I was younger, too, so there were many impulses that just came together. I ended up thinking: how can you make a feel-good film about climate change?” (Interview de Benedikt Erlingsson; Cineuropa). This film, with a light tone on a serious subject tapping into one of the most politically important questions of our time, was presented in 2018 in the Critics' Week at the Cannes Film Festival, where it had an immediate impact. “A joyful proposal whose apparently naïve story, an off-beat fable in the heart of brutal ecologist interventionism, works like a particularly efficient weapon.” (Thierry Méranger; Les Cahiers du cinéma)

CAST AND CREW

Cast : Halldóra Geirharðsdóttir, Jóhann Sigurðarson, Juan Camilo Román Estrada, Jörundur Ragnarsson
Screenplay : Benedikt Erlingsson, Ólafur Egilsson
Cinematography : Bergsteinn Björgúlfsson
Sound : Vladimir Tretyakoff
Editing : David Alexander Corno
Music : Davíð Þór Jónsson

Production : Slot Machine, Gulldrengurinn, Solar Media Entertainment

French distributor : Jour2fête