Ísold Uggadóttir is a new feature in the landscape of Icelandic cinema

The Icelandic filmmaker’s new debut feature Andið eðlilega (And Breathe Normally), a socio-realist drama set in the bleak Reykjanes Peninsula on the western edge of Iceland, has won plaudits for its portrait of characters on the fringe of society.

By Christopher Kanal Photos: Kristinn Magnússon. Stills: Ita Zbroniec-Zajt. Behind the scenes photos: Lilja Jónsdóttir

The story demanded this location but I was also intrigued by the visual non-traditional beauty of the area.

When foreigners think of Iceland they generally think of the traditional beauty of waterfalls and black beaches, a pos t card version of Iceland,” explains director Ísold Uggadótt ir. “I wanted to make a film that was the non-post card ver sion of Iceland.”

Andið eðlilega (And Breathe Normally) earlier this year won the prestigious Sundance 2018 World Cinema Dramatic Competition Directing Award and follows on from the international success of a recent crop of Icelandic films including last year’s Undir trénu (Under the Tree) from Hafsteinn Gunnar Sigurðsson and Hrútar (Rams), the 2015 film written and directed by Grímur Hákonarson.

Uggadóttir’s powerful film is the story of a struggling Icelandic single mother, Lára (Kristín Thóra Haraldsdóttir), who forms an unlikely bond with a female asylum seeker from Guinea-Bissau, Adja (Babetida Sadjo), who has become stranded in Iceland on her way to a new life in Canada. Andið eðlilega is a subtly observed, beautifully shot reflection of the two women’s struggles that compulsively mirror one another, with strong performances by Haraldsdóttir and Sadjo.

LIFE’S REFUGEES

Uggadóttir, who not just directed but wrote the screenplay, reveals clues about both Lára and Adja’s past throughout the film, a technique that intelligently drives the drama and the narrative. Both Lára and Adja are prisoners. Lára is a financial captive who struggles not just with debt as a means to support an only child, her son Eldar (Patrik Nökkvi Pétursson), but also a past marked by serious drug addiction.

Adja wants to escape the oppression of her LBGT background in her homeland and in the process of doing so becomes a literal prisoner of the Icelandic legal system, when in a twist she is detained at Keflavik Airport for using a false French passport by Lára, who is in training as a border control officer. Adja winds up stranded in Iceland and after a brief spell in prison is abandoned in a refugee processing center on the Reykjanes Peninsula while the government considers her future. Lára and Adja soon discover that they have more in common than they might have thought. The barren backdrop of Reykjanes Peninsula becomes a character in itself and is impressively evoked through the lens of the film’s Polish-born cinematographer Ita Zbroniec-Zaj. “The story demanded this location but I was also intrigued by the visual non-traditional beauty of the area,” Uggadóttir says of the Reykjanes locations, that included the town of Ásbrú, and the empty landscape around it that has for centuries been the last stop on Iceland’s western shore before the New World.

ON THE EDGE OF SOCIETY

A Columbia University MFA Filmmaking graduate, Reykjavík born Uggadóttir made a name for herself with a series of prize-winning short films including Njálsgata (2009) and Útrás Reykjavík (Revolution Reykjavík 2011), which are marked by strong lead performances and sharp storylines with a sympathetic social-conscience.

Andið eðlilega develops Uggadóttir’s approach with visual flair and an eye for the often-absurd details of life and bureaucracy. In one scene Lára refuses the kindness of strangers out of pride when someone else at her local Bónus supermarket offers to cover the cost of toilet paper Lára cannot pay for. Lára just pushes the item away and walks off. The sense of loneliness that permeates both Adja and Lára’s lives is evoked through the often-detached camera work—Lára’s occasional hookups with the mother of her son’s best friend are devoid of any conversation and their meetings in public, when pick - ing up their mutual children at school, are marked by sparse gestures and discrete glances. Likewise, the motif of entrapment is reinforced throughout the film by images of the bleak monolithic residential housing blocks, cats waiting forlornly at a rescue center and a subdued visual color palette of dark blues, greys and greens and a soundtrack of stormy weather hitting the coast with an incessant patter of rain.

Uggadóttir says that she was inspired partly by the late, great Polish director Krzysztof Kiéslowski’s masterpiece Dekalog (1989). “I wanted to talk about people who maybe live a bit on the edge of society,” she says. “Ásbrú, in particular, was formerly a US airbase, and provided cheap housing after the Cold War ended and the Americans left. “When I was writing about a povertystricken troubled mother it made sense to have her live there.” The location certainly provides a setting where the future is a black hole and where a cycle of former addictions is only replaced by new a cycle of debt and social banishment. Before meeting Adja, Lára’s only saving grace is the love and devotion of her son Eldar, poignantly played by newcomer Patrik Nökkvi Pét - ursson, and an opportunity for a new job.

“ICELANDERS TEND TO MAKE STORIES ABOUT ICELANDERS”

“I wanted to create a story that needed to be told and that was not being told in Iceland,” explains Uggadóttir who describes the origins of Andið eðlilega and how the story evolved in the wake of the global refugee crisis of the last five years. After finishing graduate school in New York, Uggadóttir returned to Iceland and sat down at her local library determined to write her first feature film. “Originally I was inspired by our economic crisis here in 2008,” she says. “I had written a short film Revolution Reykjavik about a woman who becomes a victim of it but her pride stops her from admitting how much it’s affected her. So, I had been thinking of these types of characters and was already underway with the story about a mother with her child and their cat who live in the Reykjanes area and lose their home. As I was developing that story thinking about these characters, I found myself continually reading newspaper articles about refugees stranded in this same town who were trapped and would do anything to get out of their desperate situation. They went on a hunger strike; some people tried to set themselves on fire. This was a new situation in Iceland.”

Uggadóttir felt that the plight of refugees was a major political and hu man i tarian issue for Iceland, and one that was not being addressed to a large degree by Icelanders. Refugees were in some respects invisible. “Icelanders tend to make stories about Icelanders,” she says. For research, Uggadóttir began by collecting stories from the newspapers and television reports and she attended talks. Then, she volunteered as a support worker for

I had been moved and troubled by the smaller scale crisis asylum seekers faced in Iceland, but the global scale of the plight by hundreds of thousands of people made it even more urgent to get my story out there.

the Icelandic Red Cross and was paired up with a woman from Uganda, who has since become a friend.

“During the three years I was writing the film, the refugee crisis became very big and for lack of a better word, more main stream,” she says. “It was a mere coincidence that these issues came to the world stage with such force, during my writing process. I had been moved and troubled by the small er scale crisis asylum seekers faced in Iceland, but the global scale of the plight by hundreds of thousands of people made it even more urgent to get my story out there. The shaping of the screenplay was an evolution of me sitting and piecing together individual struggles and from there the story happens organically. To draw the characters of Lára and Adja together, Uggadóttir originally considered making the pair lovers but decided that it would not work within the context of the wider story and the bigger issues of human displacement and poverty. “I had to see what might happen and what feels natural and organic,” she reflects adding that to force Lára and Adja into a traditional romantic relationship with both characters having such overwhelming struggles did not feel natural. “Of course they connect and bond as humans but I don’t want to say too much. I want to let the audience fill into the gaps and spaces where these bonds are.”

“LÁRA” AND “ADJA”: ACTION AND REACTION

One of the main strengths of the film and one picked up by critics are the performances of the two leads Kristín Thóra Har aldsdóttir and Babetida Sadjo. Uggadóttir describes how the two actors approached the respective roles of Lára and Adja. “I had seen Kristín in a play in Iceland and I was fasci - nated by her performance,” she reveals adding that during casting she could feel her pain when Haraldsdóttir auditioned for the role. “She got to know Lára. It was not so much: Let’s play out this scene. It was more like: Who is this person?”

Uggadóttir traveled to Brussels to cast the role of Adja where she first met Sadjo. “Babetida showed real depth,” she tells me. “In the interrogation scene, I really believed her.” While the role of Adja was originally written for a woman from Uganda, on hiring Sadjo, the director decided to adapt the part to fit Sadjo’s background from Guinea-Bissau. Uggadóttir adds that Sadjo knew stories of people who had to hide their sexuality and did not feel safe or free expressing it.

The filmmaker did considerable preparation with regard to the visual aesthetics of the film. Before filming took place in Iceland, the film’s cinematographer Ita Zbroniec-Zaj, the production designer Marta Luiza Macuga and Uggadóttir pre - pared the look. “That was when I realized we are now mak ing a film,” she says. “For such a long time it was about the writing and the funding and finding the cast.”

The shooting of Andið eðlilega took 27 days. It was an intense shoot with many separate locations and limited time. “It was a race,” says Uggadóttir.

CREATING STORIES

As a child, Uggadóttir moved around a lot from city to city: “I lived in Germany with my parents for a year and then on the East Coast of the United States for six years until I was 11 years old while my parents were studying.” Uggadóttir attended the University of Iceland where she studied humani - ties but her desire was always to become a filmmaker. She moved to New York in 2001 but “I still was afraid of the title of director and the title of screenwriter” so she attended a communications program at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. “I was intrigued by everything that had to do with creating stories,” she says.

Uggadóttir has plans to make a second feature. She reveals that she likes to write at her parent’s summerhouse in Skorra dalur, just over an hour from Reykjavík, and far from the distractions of life. “I like it in winter when you can really be alone,” she says. On her approach to writing, Uggadóttir emphasizes how at first she’s drawn towards feeling and getting to really know the characters well. Then, when she is ready “I will start sketching out a skeleton of a story.”

Having spent a considerable part of her life in New York City, it is not surprising to discover that it is her favorite city. “I feel very much at home there but I am also inspired by life and the constant commotion of it,” she expresses before adding, “Every day is an adventure and anything can happen.”

Berlin, where the director lived for a period in her twenties is another haunt: “The art community is thriving and I also feel comfortable there.”