Mannvirki

64th TIFF: Greek Premiere

An abandoned building on Iceland's northern coast has fallen subject to the natural forces of erosion and entropy. As the ruins and the landscape slowly yield to the wind and sea, a loose assemblage of flora, fauna, humans, and revenants share the task of giving the structure new purpose. At the border of fiction and documentary, Mannvirki contemplates this multi-layered world of uncertainty and hope. “Refusing to fit any genre, box or niche, Mannvirki can be enjoyed in many ways... [A film] open to observations and reveries, it is a poem and paean to the joys of experiencing life in subjunctive moods.” (Olaf Möller)

Screening Schedule

No physical screenings scheduled.

Direction: Gústav Geir Bollason

Script: Gústav Geir Bollason

Cinematography: Gústav Geir Bollason

Editing: Ninon Liotet

Sound: Ingvar Lundberg

Music: Hafdís Bjarnadóttir

Production: Go to Sheep

Producers: Hrönn Kristinsdóttir

Co-production: Epileptic

Co-producers: Annick Lemonnier

Format: DCP

Color: Color

Production Country: Iceland, France

Production Year: 2023

Duration: 74'

Contact: Icelandic Film Centre

Gústav Geir Bollason

Gústav Geir Bollason is an artist and filmmaker living in the north of Iceland, in the small coastal village of Hjalteyri. Bollason studied at the Icelandic College of Art and Crafts (now Iceland University of the Arts) in Reykjavík and the Hungarian University of Fine Arts in Budapest. He graduated from L’École Nationale supérieure d’arts de Paris-Cergy in 1995, and lived in Paris until 1999 before returning to north Iceland. In his filmmaking of landscape narratives—situated somewhere between art films, documentary accounts, and subjective fictions—Bollason works alongside other local residents in his interventions in situ and allows the settings to comprise an expansion of his atelier. Shooting mainly around the northern Icelandic coast where he lives, he also films in the island’s barren highlands and at sea, often focusing on liminal zones, wastelands, and ruins.