Baltasar Kormakur Quotes

I developed 'Trapped' because I was fascinated with the idea of a terrible crime in a small town cut off from the rest of the world.

I want to work with directors who can tell intimate stories in a way that feels universal and with a big enough scope and depth to travel outside of Iceland.

I think my sweet spot is to make personal films on not-too-big budgets and also make other people's films, bringing productions to Iceland, upping the business here.

I used to sail a lot in all kinds of weather, competing on small sailboats in the ocean. And I travel a lot in Iceland on horses every summer, through the wild areas where there's no inhabitants and there are volcanoes.

It's important for cinema to keep on evolving: for people, and not only teenagers, to be able to go to a movie that has huge epic scope but has an intellectual and real story to tell.

In Iceland, the weather is the biggest character you deal with every day. There's nothing more relevant in your life than what kind of weather it is.

Throughout the history of Iceland, men have been lost at sea; every family in Iceland is connected to that kind of story.

'The Oath' seems like the perfect project for me, coming off the back of a big-scale adventure film like 'Everest.' I want to delve into an intimate, dark and psychological world where the characters are claustrophobic.

The winters are too long, and there's only one airline, so it's difficult to escape when you feel frustrated or claustrophobic. The audience for our films isn't very large, so it's difficult to support an industry. But, Iceland is beautiful. Sometimes it's hard to imagine living anywhere else.

I don't see Hollywood as the big enemy, because this is where the money is, and not all of the companies are doing studio movies. I'm not tempted to sell out. If I'm going to become well known, I want it to be for something I'm proud of.

The thing about Iceland is that we are trapped there anyway, all of us. We have been trapped there for thousands of years.

I'm the first Icelandic director who started working on U.S. movies. There are others behind me now, but it's like when Bjork opened the door for Icelandic musicians to work abroad. We're such a closed-off country, but Bjork broke the spell. And I'm glad it was a woman who did it. She showed us we could break this barrier.

Real acting is about giving people an insight into a person, letting the audience in.

I have no problems with remakes, and I think it's interesting. I mean, coming from the theater, we've been remaking 'Hamlet' for a hundred years, so it's no problem to me at all. A good story can be told in many different ways in different places; I just think it's interesting.

I really wanted to make 'Everest' visceral, real. One thing that amazed me when I was scouting in base camp is the volume of Everest: It's humbling. I wanted to find a way to bring that to the screen. One way was 3D.

We will work on ways to digitally enhance Everest, matching it with Dolomites and Everest, but I'll do everything physically first. If there's no other way, then I'll go to CGI.

When I write and develop things myself, I might work for a while on a script from a book, and then I go back and read the book and go back into it to see if I lost something: is there something there?

For me, the source material can come from anywhere. It can be a poem, it can be a dream, it can be a movie, as long as the end part of it is interesting - that's what it's about for me.