The Icelandic Film and TV Academy have selected Baltasar Kormákur’s The Deep as their submission for a possible 2013 Best Foreign Language Oscar.
In a statement to the press, the academy says the film was elected by members of the board as their submission for the Academy Awards, to be held next year in the US.
The Deep, by director Baltasar Kormakur, premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in early September. The film is based on the astonishing true story of an Icelandic man who miraculously survived when a fishing boat sank off the south coast of Iceland in 1984. The man, played by Olafur Darri Olafsson, was the sole survivor and consequently became a national hero in Iceland as well as an inexplicable scientific phenomenon due to his superhuman accomplishment.
The director, Baltasar Kormakur, has worked extensively as an actor, producer and director in both theatre and film. He has completed filming the Hollywood thriller, 2 Guns, starring Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg, scheduled for release in August, 2013.
Iceland has had two nominated films in the Oscar race. Children of Nature by Fridrik Thor Fridriksson was nominated as the Best Foreign Language Film in 1992 and The Last Farm, by Runar Runarsson, was nominated for Best Live Action Short Film in 2006.
For more on the movie, and on Baltasar himself, check out Grapevine’s interview with the man in our current issue.
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