Baltasar Kormákur On Iceland’s Oscar Entry ‘Touch’ & Being A Filmmaker Of Many Genres: “People Always Try To Put You In Brackets, And I Refuse To Be Put There”

deadline.com:

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.