Baltasar Kormákur’s Icelandic box office hit Touch marks the fifth time that the filmmaker has been chosen as the country’s representative in the International Feature Oscar category, but it also reps something of a departure for the multi-hyphenate who’s perhaps more associated outside of Iceland with action and adventure titles like 2 Guns and Everest.
A love story based on the bestselling novel by Ólafur Jóhann Ólafsson, who co-wrote the script with Kormákur, Touch follows widower Kristofer (Egil Ólafsson), who, after receiving an early-stage dementia diagnosis at the outset of the pandemic, leaves behind his Reykjavik home hoping to solve the greatest mystery of his life. As a student in London five decades earlier, Kristofer had fallen in love with Miko, whose father owned the Japanese restaurant where they both worked. But at the height of their whirlwind affair, Miko abruptly vanished. As panic about the virus spreads around the world, Kristofer sets out to find his soulmate, resolving to follow her trail wherever it might lead— even back to Miko’s birthplace of Hiroshima — before his memories are lost forever in time.
Kormákur, who for years has worked across Iceland and Hollywood, has previously told Deadline, “I’m always hoping a film like this gives you an opportunity to do something more dramatic. I want to develop as a filmmaker and a human being.” Deadline recently caught up with Kormákur — who is currently in Australia prepping Netflix thriller Apex starring Charlize Theron — to discuss Touch and his desire to be seen as a multi-genre director.
Universal/Focus have world rights to Touch outside of Iceland, where Sena released in May. Global box office now stands at over $2.8M. RVK Studios’ Kormákur and Agnes Johansen produced Touch alongside Good Chaos’ Mike Goodridge.
The conversation below has been edited and condensed for clarity.
DEADLINE: Congratulations on the selection for Touch. Earlier this year, you told me you hoped to be the Oscar entry from Iceland — with a thematically different movie than the last time. Why was this one important for you?
BALTASAR KORMAKUR: At the beginning of my career, I did a lot of Shakespeare and Chekhov and all kinds of stuff, and directed on stage. Then, my Icelandic films have been family drama to black comedy to survival. When I started getting opportunities, and I’m very grateful for them — I don’t want to sound like an ungrateful bastard — first it was a thriller and then I did 2 Guns, (which was) kind of a thriller comedy. Then came the survival films, but I always wanted to make a drama. And this is a dramatic love story.
I guess when you work in the theater, both as an actor and director, you’re not necessarily as pigeonholed as you are as a filmmaker. You do everything. I did musicals as well. I did Rent on the Icelandic stage as a director. So you go from that to Hamlet and it’s kind of, you don’t look at yourself as a one-genre director, but often in films, it tends to be more like that.
DEADLINE: I think some people outside of Iceland may be surprised to hear that you directed musicals on stage…
KORMAKUR: I’ve done everything and everything in between as well. So you have the idea of yourself that, I don’t see myself as only the thriller director or the survival director. It’s funny, when I started making films, the first thing I did, 101 Reykjavik, is kind of a black comedy. Some critic said it was the end of the romantic comedy because it’s so black… and they called me like, “Almodovar on Ice” after that movie.
Then I did another film, The Sea. It was a family drama, and then they called me the “Icelandic Bergman.” Then I did two films with Mark Wahlberg and I became the Mark Wahlberg guy, you know?
People are always trying to put you in some brackets, and I kind of refuse to be put there. But in all fairness of reality, the fact is that foreign directors tend to be more likely to get thrillers and stuff like that. So, when I go home and make a film, I just do whatever my heart tells me to do.
DEADLINE: And what did your heart tell you about Touch?
KORMAKUR: I wasn’t looking for a love story, like, can you send me scripts about love stories? It was just I had the idea it would be nice to do that one day, and kind of use that muscle a little bit and go into the feeling. When it came to me, it just felt, yeah, this is the kind of story I feel are missing in cinema. I love (Paweł Pawlikowski’s) Cold War, for example — a big love story through the ages. And it tells a very simple story, in a way, about two people being on the two sides of the west and the east. These kind of stories always resonated with me, but I do feel like I haven’t necessarily seen a lot of them recently on the screen.
DEADLINE: You’re still working quite a bit in Hollywood…
KORMAKUR: I don’t feel there have ever been more opportunities in Hollywood than now, for some reason.
DEADLINE: Are the Hollywood projects also something that helps allow you to go back home and do what’s closer to your heart?
KORMAKUR: I think it keeps me going. But there are some projects on the horizon that have that kind of element. Not necessarily a love story, but more dramatic stories. I would love not having to go home to make this. But there’s a reality. I come from a country with a language that less than 400,000 people speak… And, I think I made the most of it because I made television, and I managed to export it. But there is a limit to it. It’s not like Spanish or French or German where you have a huge market, right?
On the other hand, I choose the best that I get when I’m offered, but I like to play on the big stage. I like to be a part of it, Hollywood, and it’s given me a lot of opportunity with the Icelandic stuff. They support each other; I get connections and companies like Focus who supported me making this film. So I think it doesn’t necessarily exclude the other.
DEADLINE: Let’s talk a little more about Touch, which you’ve described as an unusual film coming from an Icelandic perspective. Why do you feel that?
KORMAKUR: Because it rarely happens in Iceland. It is a love story that happens between and Icelandic man and a Japanese woman. It takes place originally in London, and the only part of Iceland you see is leaving it, and then the resolution of it happens in Japan. And there’s more Japanese spoken in the film than Icelandic. So this is really a rare bird in Icelandic filmography.
DEADLINE: It’s interesting what you say about the language, because it clearly has not been a barrier for audiences since this is the highest grossing movie of the year in Iceland.
KORMAKUR: I’m really happy with that because I love Icelandic as a language. But at the end of the day, I’m making a film, and the film has to have the language that is appropriate to the way it happens and to whom it happens.
I think we have sometimes pigeonholed ourselves in the way of “What is an Icelandic film, or what isn’t an Icelandic film?” Americans make whatever they want and call it American film, wherever and about whatever on the f*cking moon or on Mars, and it’s still American film. But all of our films will have to happen on a f*cking farm in Iceland, you know, and these old guys talking to a sheep… Because we are small and cute, that’s what the world’s gonna see. But I don’t really want to bend to that. I think there’s much more potential, and films are not really defined by the language.
DEADLINE: You ended up co-writing the Touch script with the author of the book. What was that process like?
KORMAKUR: (Laughs) You know what they say, “Never work with with children, animals and novelists.” I made the third one up. I’ve had some complicated situations like that with authors, but for some reason, I still took the chance of asking Ólafur because he wasn’t demanding it. I thought it would be an interesting thing to work together, and it actually turned out to be great. It was really seamless. He respected the fact that this would be my film, and his book had been published, and he wanted just to support me and it also gave me a nice freedom, that you’re actually working, you’re changing book with the author. He was very generous in that process and we’re working on two other things together.
DEADLINE: What was your relationship to Japan before?
KORMAKUR: Not much. I had been there before. I was fascinated by the country, and I read the novel. And the novelist had spent a lot of time in Japan, because he used to work for Sony. Of course, the story comes from him originally, but I just had to go there and learn more about it and bring people to the table. And again, as I said, it’s an Icelandic perspective of a foreign country.
DEADLINE: In the film, we learn that Miko’s father narrowly escaped death when the atomic bomb landed on Hiroshima. Miko was born the same year, and her mother died shortly after from radiation sickness.What about the Hiroshima aspect of the story drew you in?
KORMAKUR: We tend to shout at each other today and blame each other for things. But in this case, it’s not about that. It’s about the consequences. It’s about one victim who wasn’t even born when it happened. I love that; it’s just a very kind of quiet way.
The question I would like to think I’m putting out there is saying to people, “Do we really want to repeat this? Who is going to do it? Is it going to be Putin or Trump, or who is going to do it? Do we really want to repeat that mistake of history?” And sometimes, when you whisper something in people’s ear, rather than shout it, they hear it better. That’s the kind of approach that I feel this movie is, it’s whispering, and it’s kind of layered story that whispers this in the end without ever saying it straight.