The Storms Within

Delirious, emotional, and sometimes unsettling, Bergur Bernburg’s Storm Alerts takes a raw look inside life with a mental condition

Euphoric one moment, engulfed by darkness the next. A brilliant mind trapped on an endless pendulum. This is bipolar disorder, but more specifically, this is the lived reality of Dr. Marteinn Helgi Sigurðsson, a distinguished Icelandic scholar specialising in Old Norse studies, now a central character in Bergur Bernburg’s feature film Storm Alerts (Veðurskeytin in Icelandic).

Having opened the 2025 Stockfish Film & Industry Festival, this 82-minute hybrid documentary tells a story of one person’s journey navigating their new condition, all while challenging viewers to reconsider the established narratives surrounding mental illness and the human psyche.

Into the uncharted mind

Bergur Bernburg may not be the name often mentioned in Icelandic cinema circles — understandably so, as he’s spent the last three decades in Denmark, primarily focused on commercial video work. Storm Alerts marks only his second venture into feature-length territory, arriving ten years after Horizon, which he co-directed with Oscar-nominated Friðrik Þór Friðriksson (now one of the producers of Storm Alerts).

Bergur Bernburg/Supplied

When I mention the 2015 film, Bergur smiles. “These two films are similar in many ways. They’re an attempt to put the audience in a person’s mind,” he says. In Horizon, that mind belonged to Icelandic landscape painter Georg Guðni. In Storm Alerts, it’s Dr. Marteinn Helgi Sigurðsson.

The genesis of the film is Marteinn himself. “It all started with the main character in the film, Marteinn, who is, through many years, a good friend of mine,” Bergur tells me. “About 13 or 14 years ago, I noticed that his behaviour was changing, and I didn’t really understand what was going on. I tried asking him to explain because he could obviously also see that, but he’d say, ‘You will never understand.’”

It wasn’t until Marteinn’s condition worsened and hospitalisation became inevitable that he began to open up, sharing that he’d been experiencing manic episodes, triggered by traumatic events in his past. “Which is basically the main subject of a film,” says Bergur. “It’s a traumatic journey.”

At the heart of Storm Alerts is Marteinn’s real-life story — once a respected scholar and assistant professor at the University of Copenhagen, whose life was upended by a bipolar diagnosis. Part documentary, part fiction, the film chronicles Marteinn’s turbulent relationship with his manic episodes, featuring the man himself in a series of raw, unfiltered monologues.

“It’s a traumatic journey.”

The idea to turn Marteinn’s story into a film sprouted from Bergur’s fascination with something fundamentally alien to his own experience — something he couldn’t completely understand himself. “I found it interesting addressing a universe from a perception of a person who’s dealing with this condition, without really knowing how or where we would be going,” he says.

Marteinn, naturally, was initially hesitant to reveal his innermost demons on screen. But, eventually, he agreed. The two began filming conversations where Bergur encouraged Marteinn to both explain and visualise what he’d been going through.

Storm Alerts began without a clear script, but from the start, Bergur knew one thing for sure — he didn’t want to make a straightforward documentary, which would’ve been the obvious choice. “I wanted to dive into his perspective and talk about unreal things and his reality as a person in mania,” he explains.

Real and surreal

Alongside Marteinn’s experiences, the film’s fictional elements rest almost entirely on two characters. Kristján Ingimarsson plays M, an interpretation of Marteinn, while Kurt Ravn portrays Marteinn’s psychiatrist. Kristján’s character doesn’t speak — a natural fit given the actor’s background in wordless stage performance. The silence, Bergur explains, was deliberate. It helps to balance Marteinn’s often heavy dialogue, blending reality with fiction. “We thought Kristján would be a good bridge between Marteinn and the vivid scenes,” he says.

The psychiatrist is based on Marteinn’s actual doctor, with some of the dialogue taken directly from his medical records. “The purpose of the role [of the psychiatrist] is to address what Marteinn is also addressing in the film — how do we as a society, and specifically the medical and the pharma world, address mental illnesses,” Bergur explains. “They put everything in a box, and fit each and every individual into those boxes, because those are the options available. But a personalised box does not exist. You have to fit into something, and you get some kind of treatment and evaluation based on those boxes.”

Still, Bergur stresses that the aim of the film isn’t to explain Marteinn’s condition from a medical perspective. Instead, he treats Storm Alerts as an expedition into Marteinn’s mind. “The film is about how he deals with it and his perception of it. How he can also see it as a strength, but by default, we as a society, see it as a weakness.”

Marteinn’s dialogue, archival footage, memories from his colleagues, and scenes featuring M and the psychiatrist are intertwined with sequences of, at times, tacky stock images and videos that add an almost surreal element. “Marteinn told me that when he was in mania, everything that he was looking at, he was tasting, he was smelling, everything was exaggerated — colours, dimensions, everything. It’s like living in a psychedelic world,” Bergur says. The nature clips and chaotic visuals are meant to reflect that state. “I always knew that I needed to visualise that feeling.”

Layers to unpack

Bergur acknowledges that music had a lot of influence on the mood of the film and the editing process. Drawing from his background as a musician, musical ideas were a part of the project from the very beginning. The official score for Storm Alerts was composed by Sin Fang and Kjartan Hólm, but in addition to the original music, the film features external musical selections — in particular, Ravel’s “Boléro.”

“We’re trying to show the audience that there is more to life than what we’re looking at and that every individual is unique.”

This famous orchestral piece, with its gradual build-up and repetition, mirrors the escalating chaos within Marteinn’s mind. But it also echoes the film’s broader themes of reality and truth. “I guess it’s a part of saying that those things have been addressed before,” Bergur reflects. The “Boléro” recordings used in the film are rare — pulled from Danish television archives, dating back to 1973 and conducted by Romanian maestro Sergiu Celibidache, who famously resisted being recorded, believing it diminished the magic of live performance. It’s a sentiment that ties back to Marteinn’s own criticism of academia — how institutions often rely on “pre-ordered conclusions” rather than staying true to themselves.

“Maybe there are a lot of connections that are not very clear for the audience,” Bergur admits, quickly adding, “Maybe that’s not quite fair, but the connections are there.”

He says many viewers have told him the film made more sense on a second viewing. “I understand that comment,” he says with a smile. “It helps knowing what you’re getting into because this is not a very traditional film. I’m just happy that people spend their time seeing it again.”

Bergur adds that Storm Alerts is, at its core, a deeply subjective film — one made from a place of friendship, trust, and love. “We’re trying to show the audience that there is more to life than what we’re looking at and that every individual is unique,” he says. “History is one of the most important ingredients — the compass we use to navigate our lives, our world, and our reality. If we don’t know the past, how can we know anything about the future?”

Storm Alerts is screening at Bíó Paradís throughout May and will be available to watch on RÚV later this year.