Olaf de Fleur

2008 - “BEST FILM”Teddy Awards Berlin Int’l Film Festival “Queen Raquela”

2008 - “BEST FEATURE FILM ” Zinegoak Film FestivalBilbao, Spain “Queen Raquela”

2008 - “GRAND JURY PRIZE” CinemanilaPhilippines - “Queen Raquela”

2008 - “BEST FILM” & “SHOWTIME VANGUARD AWARD”New York LGBT Awards - “Queen Raquela”

2008 - “AWARD FOR CONTRIBUTINGTO CONTEMPORARY FILM LANGUAGE” - ExitFestival, Serbia - “Queen Raquela”

2005 - “BEST DOCUMENTARY”Icelandic Film Awards Africa United

2004 - “BEST DOCUMENTARY”Icelandic Icelandic Film Awards Blindsker

Olaf de Fleur, the Icelandic director of the multi-awarded The Amazing Truth about Queen Raquela (nominated for a Nordic Council Film Prize in 2009) has three films scheduled for release in 2011, including the comedy drama Polite People opening this Friday. The writer/director/producer spoke to us.

Production is slowing down in Iceland due to lack of funding yet you’re incredible busy. What is your recipe to keep on making films?
We have three films coming out this year. A documentary called Adequate Beings, and two features Polite People and City State. I don’t really have a recipe for making films. I just do it for several reasons. I love working with other people, forming the creative group of crew and cast and having fun. Then there are practical things, such as staying afloat in a very shaky business, which means that you have to be productive. Running a small film company in Iceland has never paid off, and now, given the recent cuts in the film industry in Iceland, for the first time since I started, I’m thinking of quitting making my own films to find projects abroad and work on other people’s projects. This however, could be a temporary insanity that I’m suffering from…

How did you put the financing together for your films?
On all projects we had the Icelandic Film Fund, then Karolina Lidin at Nordisk Film & TV Fond, helped us with the documentary film along with the MEDIA Programme, and TV stations such as NRK in Norway and RUV in Iceland. Polite People was sold to YLE in Finland and City State to SVT in Sweden. Other than that, I have to say it’s extremely difficult to find funding. It’s also my fault, I move very quickly, jump and shoot a film within six months after the idea comes to my mind. I guess I’ll have to slow down somewhat. To finance a project, one should really take at least two to three years, but I simply can’t. My small company doesn’t have the financial stamina for that, so we’re always jumping ahead.

You’ve directed a comedy drama, an action film and a documentary about farmers in Iceland. Although different in genres, would you say that the three films have in common the themes of manipulation and deceit?
That’s true for the features, but the documentary doesn’t really have that. Everybody is really true in the documentary, and honest. My features have the manipulative part. It’s my own bitterness I guess, life promises something, and we don’t get it, so we think we’re being lied to. Of course it’s our mind that is polluted and life is clean water, but it’s fun to play with, and it’s the point of filmmaking, to reflect lies to the audience via drama.

Could you describe the storyline for each project? 
Polite People is a dramedy about a city slicker that makes his way into a small farming community by pretending to be able to help them re-finance the slaughterhouse and rebuild the town, unaware of the turmoil he is entering of small-town politics and general misbehaving. I’m looking at how Icelandic corruption can be funny, because we’re so few, everybody is related to somebody, so we are a very corruption prone country. Also, we filmed this project in my old home town where I grew up, that was the most fun, to meet all the locals again.

City State is a drama/thriller about a Serbian mechanic that loses his unborn child after an attack from a drug gang. When he decides to revenge, he tangles his fate together with a police woman, a corrupt sergeant and crime kingpin. I’ve always wanted to do a Nordic crime drama, I feel that the genre is somewhat under-explored and that I could do something with it. Even though we have all the action and drama of this genre, I’m really focusing on how, when you desire something, like love, you just move further away from it.

The documentary film Adequate Beings is about farmers in a small town on the west coast of Iceland, we did the film as a team, and we did it mainly focusing on every-day atmosphere. It’s just regular people dealing with regular things, which is spectacular in itself. None of the films would have come about if it wasn’t for my producer Kristin Andrea who produced all those films and melted the team and cast together. 

What is the national and international release plan for each film? 
Here in Iceland we’ll be showing Polite People and City State around the country in cinemas and then we’ll show the documentary on RUV. Regarding the international, right now we’re sending our films out to sales agents and festivals. 

More and more documentary filmmakers use fiction ways and techniques to tell stories and vice versa. Is this something you relate to?
Totally, I’ve used that in all my films. Documentary filmmaking is a great school. It teaches you to become a better narrative filmmaker, because it’s very hard to do a decent documentary film.

By Ben Hopkins

As 2009 drew to a close, I asked many of Iceland’s leading filmmakers a number of questions about the local film industry as well as their own work. This was for a feature focusing on Icelandic film talent that ran in UK music magazine Clash that you can read online right here.

Now the focus falls on Olaf de Fleur. More on his projects, including the popular web TV series Circledrawers, can be found at Poppoli Pictures.

Read the full interview

By Vanessa McMahon

Interview with Olaf de Fleur Johannesson, the grand Icelandic director of Polite People (2010) and City State (2011). Olaf speaks in depth about both films and being a filmmaker far north, in Iceland.

ME: First, can you speak about how you got into writing and directing and producing for film?

OLAF: I was depressed, probably because I always take life much more seriously than needed. Out of that depression came a longing to create something and filmmaking just sort of was the choice. I did the “slave” circle, being a runner here and there, editing boring stuff and so on. What I’m most happy about is not going to film school. Instead I took a loan and founded Poppoli Pictures with my friends. And we’ve done four features and five docs, and we’re not bankrupt, which is pretty dandy.

Read the full interview

By Wendy Mitchell

Olaf de Fleur says he has been through ‘a good film school of dos and don’ts’ in the past few busy years making a string of very different feature films. ‘I’ve been working on quantity, just doing a lot of films for the past four or five years,’ the Icelandic director says. ‘You need four or five films to get the language of film correct.’

Read the full interview      

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