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Filmmaker Baltasar Kormákur got his start directing offbeat Icelandic comedies like 2000’s 101 Reykjavík and procedural thrillers such as 2006’s Jar City. In 2012, he helmed The Deep, about a fisherman who survives in freezing waters after his boat capsizes. The movie was chosen as Iceland’s official entry for the 85th Oscars.
The Deep was also the first of the movies Kormákur has become known for: Natural horror films about people surviving the most extreme circumstances. He directed 2015’s Everest, starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Jason Clarke as mountain climbers caught in a blizzard, and 2018’s Adrift, which stars Shailene Woodley and Sam Claflin as a couple who are adrift at sea after a hurricane. His latest, Beast, stars Idris Elba as a single father who must protect his daughters from a man-hunting lion while on safari in Africa.
“I think at the end of the day, there isn’t much different in how I make my films in Iceland or when I make a big Hollywood film,” Kormákur explains. “The path I’ve chosen is to merge these things together. I’ve been offered some of these big, big franchises and stuff, but I know you can’t really take them off in your direction. That’s why I stay with middle-sized movies like Beast, where I’m allowed to dirty it up and do something that excites me.”
“At the same time, I have to admit that I love the scale. I love making movies that the world sees,” he adds. “That’s a little bit difficult when you come from a country of 300,000 people.”
Below, Kormákur shares with A.frame five of the films that have most impacted him. “Also, it sounds like I only watch foreign directors,” he chuckles. “But I like Witness and Mississippi Burning. When I started to make this list, I could have gone on forever, because I just love good films!”
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