SCREENING EXCLUSIVELY AT THE IFI

This compelling offering from Icelandic maverick Baltasar Kormákur adapts a nationally-famous true-life story to ponder just what it’s like to be touched by the miraculous.

In 1984, a trawler left port in heavy seas (nothing unusual in that), only to capsize in a freak accident. Thrown into the freezing North Atlantic, the crew were evidently doomed, but one man managed to swim ashore, lasting longer in the water than ever thought humanly possible. This was no super-athlete however, but an overweight, decidedly ordinary bloke called Gulli – believably incarnated on screen by actor Ólafur Darri Ólafsson – who then found himself deeply uncomfortable with the attention from the media and the scientific community in the wake of his survival.

Taking a resolutely anti-Hollywood approach to the material, Kormákur crafts a film as remarkable and mysterious as the events which inspired it.  (Notes By Trevor Johnston.)