PROFILES Baltasar Kormakur The Deep


shoot in Iceland, as well as Work- ing Title’s Mount Everest project. He is also producing Dagur Kari’s Iceland-set Rocket Man.


Baltasar Kormakur


There’s no chance Icelandic direc- tor Baltasar Kormakur will be bored: yesterday was the last day of principal photography in New Mexico for his thriller 2 Guns, star- ring Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg and sold by Foresight, and today sees the world premiere here of his latest passion project, The Deep. The drama tells the remarkable


true story of a man who survived deadly conditions after a shipwreck in Iceland. BAC is handling inter- national sales and WME handles North America. Kormakur’s future projects include a Viking saga to


Why were you drawn to this story? I’ve known this story since I was about 18. It always stuck with me. We are a nation of fi sherman, eve- ryone is connected one way or another to an accident at sea. It’s an incredibly diffi cult and danger- ous line of work. That’s one level, but also in


2008 everyone in Iceland was talking about stories about the financial collapse. Of course you want to deal with the collapse on some level but I didn’t want to tell the story of a banker or someone who lost a lot of money. I wanted to look at it in a broader perspec- tive, why do people live in a place like this?


It seems like a film that can be quite specific about Iceland but also quite universal and mythic: one man fighting the elements. It’s about a man and nature and I think that connects everywhere. It


The Deep


could be people in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.


What were the physical challenges of shooting at sea? It’s probably the hardest shoot I’ve done. I went to check out all the [studio] tanks, but the only way to make this one authentic was to shoot in the Atlantic Ocean. I also wanted badly to under-


stand a little bit what they were going through. When I was in the boat when it went over [shooting the shipwreck] — it was probably foolish to do this, looking back — I was struck by the power of the


water when it came in. I also real- ised how hopeless the situation is for these guys when it happens.


Your career now includes bigger US films, but Icelandic films are still important to you. I’ve never looked at is as going to Hollywood. I’ve had opportunities to do bigger fi lms that are interest- ing. Those also help me finance the smaller fi lms. This is who I am, this is immensely important to me, this is where I come from, this is my ground, it’s authentic to me and I need to tell those stories. Wendy Mitchell


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Editorial Tel +1 416 599 8433 ext 2512 Editor Wendy Mitchell +44 (0) 7889 414 856 US editor Jeremy Kay +1 310 922 5908 jeremykay67@gmail.com Chief critic and reviews editor Mark Adams +44 (0) 7834 902 528 Group head of production and art Mark Mowbray +44 (0) 7710 124 065 Sub-editor Jamie McLeish Sid Adilman mentorship programme Cosima Amelang cosima.amelang@gmail.com


Anand Gandhi Ship Of Theseus


At India’s Film Bazaar projects market in Goa in 2010, young fi lm-maker Anand Gandhi cre- ated a stir among sales agents and festival programmers with the showreel and script of his debut feature, Ship Of Theseus. The following year Gandhi


(pictured) returned to Goa with the project as a ‘work-in-progress’ and Fortissimo Films announced that it would co-produce and handle international sales on the film. Ship Of Theseus is now receiving its world premiere as the opening film of Toronto International Film Festival’s City To City programme, which this year focuses on Mumbai. Named after a philosophical


paradox, the film comprises three stories which explore questions of identity, death, evo- lution, dogma and change. One story follows a blind pho-


tographer, brilliant despite her disability, who loses her talent


when she recovers her sight. Another story revolves around a monk who has to choose between death and taking medi- cine that has been tested on ani- mals. The third story follows a stockbroker who is incensed when he discovers a black mar- ket for organ transplants, but then faces the benefi ciary of a stolen kidney living in Sweden.


title raises q u e s t i o n


The paradox of the the o f


whether an object which has had all of its component p a r t s


applies this paradox to people.


“When applied to ■ 34 Screen International at Toronto September 7, 2012 r e p l a c e d


remains fundamentally the same object. Gandhi


human beings, the paradox of Theseus’ Ship throws up a series of interesting ethical problems,” he explains. “All the cells in a person’s body regenerate entirely in seven years. An indi- vidual goes through a paradigm shift psychologically, ideologi- cally and physically. Is it still the same person?”


Though Gandhi studied philoso- phy in college, and then under his own initiative after he dropped out, he says the film has much more personal ori-


gins — he was faced with many uncomfortable questions while nursing his grandmother in hospital. He started writing the script but struggled to secure fi nancing until he started work- ing with a promising new actor — Sohum Shah — who until that time had been working in mainstream fi lms.


Shah helped bring in the film’s producer and financier, Mukesh Shah, who ful ly fi nanced the sub-$1m produc- tion. The cast also includes Egyptian actress and film- maker Aida el-Kashef and India’s Neeraj Kabi.


Gandhi wrote his fi rst profes- sional play, Sugandhi, when he was 19 years old and his first short film, Right Here, Right Now (2003), screened at the Tribeca Film Festival and won best short at the Syracuse Inter- national Film Festival.


Liz Shackleton


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