Joining Smari Gunn and Logi Sigursveinsson‘s The Home Game is Erlingur Thoroddsen’s Icelandic thriller Cold (Kuldi) at Glasgow Film Festival.
We have been keeping an eye out for this film for some time so it was great to finally get to preview it and speak to the director whose previous work includes the brilliant Rift (Rokkur).
An adaptation of a Yrsa Sigurðardóttir book, the original title being The Undesired, Erlingur’s adaptation is something which fans of her previous adaptation, I Remember You, will absolutely love.
I had first discovered Erlingur’s work back in 2020 when I discovered the film on Amazon Prime – the film itself was released in 2017. I watched the film without having any idea or clues what to expect and was really impressed with the chilling story which was also a beautiful story about heart break and broken relationships.
With Cold, Erlingur returns with a solid Icelandic cast and more spooky thrills to get absorbed into. I caught up with the director over video call from his home in Iceland.
Nordic Watchlist: Yrsa has a great skill in really messing with people’s heads hasn’t she?
Erlingur Thoroddsen: Yrsa is great isn’t she? She loves that people are getting their heads messed with. It was amazing to get to work with her – I have been a fan of hers for a long time and it was a dream come true to get to work with her.
Nordic Watchlist: She managed to terrify the life out of our Nordic book expert Glen with her recent novel Prey.
Erlingur Thoroddsen: It has been fun as she has so many genres that she wants to explore and I am really excited to see what she is working on next. I can’t say much more about that!
Nordic Watchlist: So how did Cold come about for you – had you read the book and decided that it was something you wanted to adapt? How did it all come to be?
Erlingur Thoroddsen: I hadn’t read the book when the project started, which was around 2017 when Rift first came out and was about to start its festival runs. A producer called Sigurjon Sighvatsson had somehow managed to see Rift and really enjoyed it. At the time he had just finished producing Yrsa’s other book adaptation I Remember You that had been really successful here.
He called me and asked me to read the book to see if I thought there could be a movie in it. I read it in a day and I really could see how it could become a movie.
Nordic Watchlist: One of the things which really attracted me to this project was the cast – it is an insanely talented cast in here. There is a lot of younger talents coming up and mixing in with this experienced group with the likes of Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson and Halldóra Geirharðsdóttir – how involved were you with selecting this cast?
Erlingur Thoroddsen: I was very involved and super lucky as pretty much everyone in the cast was my first choice! It also helped that everyone loves Yrsa so I think her name really helped get everyone excited and saying yes.
Working with Halldóra was amazing, she is one of my idols, when she was on set I was suddenly thinking to myself – How do you direct your idol? We did the first take and it was perfect and thankfully everyone was just amazing to work with. It was a joy to work with the experienced actors and the younger actors.
Nordic Watchlist: I was really excited to see Elin Hall (pictured above) involved in this – she was so incredible in Let Me Fall and her performance just totally blew me away. Then she went and recorded an album and started to do theatre – so getting her back on the screen again was just awesome.
Erlingur Thoroddsen: We were so lucky with her – she had done Let Me Fall when she was seventeen or eighteen and she had not done anything before that. She is just this total raw talent but I had not really been thinking about her as she had not done a lot after that film – but she had sent in her self tape when we were doing her audition. It took ten seconds for me to realise that she was the actor I wanted for this role.
Things got a bit complicated though as she picked up Covid just before shooting and then there was balancing it with her theatre work as well. She was amazing as some days she was travelling to the city after a full day’s work, grabbing some sleep, before then performing on stage the next day. I am forever grateful that we managed to make this work with her. My memories remind me sometimes on how the hell this all happened – how did we make it work?!
Nordic Watchlist: We have to also mention our Succession-starring Iceland superstar – Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson who also is in I Remember You.
Erlingur Thoroddsen: That idea originally came from Sigurjon, the producer, he wanted to maintain a connection with the films. I loved that idea and I was so excited to get to work with Jóhannes too.
At one point we considered how it might have been possible to make him the same character and rewriting the story. We decided not to do that in the end especially as we had another actor from it with Sara Dögg Ásgeirsdóttir too.
Nordic Watchlist: When it comes to Icelandic films do you think we have a great year ahead of us? With both Cold and The Home Game screening at Glasgow Film Festival, Driving Mum has been finally released in the UK.
Erlingur Thoroddsen: We’ve had some great years with Icelandic film, even last year we had three Icelandic films in the Top 10 Box Office in Iceland which is amazing! I think there are a lot of upcoming Icelandic films to be excited about, and although international distribution is in a bit of a strange place currently, hopefully people will get to see all of them eventually.
Nordic Watchlist: Or fly Icelandair – we found a great loop hole there!
Erlingur Thoroddsen: When I lived in America I used to catch up on all the Icelandic films I had missed on my flight back. Icelandair is certainly doing us a great service!
Nordic Watchlist: We had spoken before about some of your favourite horror films when I was writing an article a couple of years ago but I wanted to find out what were some of your influences which set you on this path.
Erlingur Thoroddsen: It goes quite far back for me – when I was 7 or 8 years old. I would go to the video store and straight to the horror section to see the covers of the movies there, something drew me to that, I would read the back and then imagine what the film was like then go to school and tell the kids my versions of the stories.
I became obsessed with Freddy Kruger but then the thing which really used to scare me when I think back to it was Bob from Twin Peaks (pictured below).
Nordic Watchlist: Oh god – David Lynch has a lot to answer for!
Nordic Watchlist: What is coming up next for you and are you sticking to the genre you love?
Erlingur Thoroddsen: I am in this weird period at the moment where I have two films out at the same time in various different places. So I have The Piper and Cold out there which has kept my hands very full with those two.
The horror genre is still very much my true love and I would love to keep making stuff in that space, but I also have a few things which are more like a thriller, even perhaps a total U-turn aswell.
I am not quite sure what will be next – I am going with the flow and see where my fate will take me.
Cold premiered at Glasgow Film Festival and joins its Icelandic counterpart The Home Game in being nominated for the Audience’s Award. Nordic Watchlist will keep you posted on any further news of a UK or International release. You can watch Rift over on Amazon Prime (for those of you in the UK).
