"Rams" director to make first English-language film

Rams tells the story of two feuding brothers in rural …

Rams tells the story of two feuding brothers in rural Iceland. Still/Rams

Grímur Hákonarson, the director of award-winning Icelandic film  Rams (‘Hrútar’) is working on a new title, this time an English-language feature film,  filmed in the United States. 

Rams has received a total of 24 awards all over the world, including the coveted ‘Un Certain Regard’  at the Cann­es film festival. 

“Rams has opened a lot of doors for me to make a film in English,” says film director Grímur Hákonarson. He is writing the script himself and does not want to say more at this time. He has been busy promoting the film and says he hasn’t been back home in Iceland for five to six weeks. 

Hákonarson is currently in Canada for the Victoria Film Festival. Last week Rams was released in New York, London, and Warsaw. The New York Times and The Guardian published favourable reviews on Rams last week. 

Rams has been very popular with French audiences, undoubtedly because of the Cannes award, with 120 thousand people having seen the film in France. In Reykjavik,  22 thousand people have seen the film at Bíó Paradís, an art house film theatre on Hverfisgata in central Reykjavik. 

Hákonarson was recently interviewed by Variety about the disappointment of not making it to the final foreign-language Oscar list. "There had been many reports indicating that ‘Rams’ was strongly tipped for a foreign-language nomination so we were surprised that we didn’t make the cut," he says in the interview. 

Hákonarson suggested that spending invested in Oscar campaigns should be capped to ensure that every movie has an equal chance of getting selected. Although ‘Rams’ is distributed in the U.S. by Cohen Media Group which managed to get ‘Mustang’ into the list, Hákonarson argues his movie didn’t get as much financial support from Iceland than other contenders that were backed by funding boards from big and/or prosperous countries such as France, Germany or even Denmark.

Read the reviews here: 

New York Times’s review of Rams 

The Guar­di­an’s review of Rams 

Director Grímur Hákonarson, with one of the 24 awards that …

Director Grímur Hákonarson, with one of the 24 awards that "Rams" has received around the world. Photo/Mbl.is

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