Baltasar Kormákur was in a reflective mood at the Taormina Film Festival, where his romantic drama Touch had its Italian premiere this past week. The Icelandic filmmaker compared Touch to his first feature, 2000’s 101 Reykjavik. The former was “a black comedy about love,” while Touch is “a way more sincere approach to love and life,” he said.
Touch, which has just become the biggest film of the year in Iceland at $569,600, is based on Ólafur Jóhann Ólafsson’s bestselling 2021 novel Snerting. It wouldn’t be surprising to see it become the Icelandic entry for the International Feature Oscar race this year — Kormákur already has repped his home country four times, making the shortlist with 2012’s The Deep.
The multi-hyphenate, who for years has worked across Iceland and Hollywood, told Deadline that he sparked to Touch’s source material immediately but only later realized he had a particular connection to the story.
The film follows widower Kristofer (Egil Ólafsson), who, after receiving an early-stage dementia diagnosis at the outset of the Covid 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.
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Kormákur recounted that his parents had met in a similar way. His mother was working “in the only café in Reykjavik” while his Barcelona-born artist father, who had fled Franco-led Spain, was working on a fishing boat in Iceland. Passing through Reykjavik, the only place he could hook up with other artists was in that café, where he met the girl of his dreams. Eighteen days later, they were engaged. Kormákur mused that his parents’ chance meeting “shows how life choices are sometimes made in a second — my whole existence is based on this one moment.”
He added of Touch: “I’m always hoping a film like this gives you an opportunity to do something more dramatic. I want to develop as a filmmaker and a human being.” Recently going through a divorce “has changed a lot the way I see things.”
This “doesn’t mean I’ll be making love stories about old men for the rest of my life,” he said. Rather, the hope is to merge how he is perceived as a filmmaker.
Kormákur’s high-profile Hollywood credits include 2012’s Contraband, 2013’s 2 Guns and 2015’s Everest. He explains that he’s better known in Iceland for his homegrown dramas, family stories and Shakespeare adaptations. “But Hollywood saw Jar City and The Deep, and then you tend to get pigeonholed in certain genres. What I would love to do is kind of marry those things so I become not this guy in America and this guy in Iceland. … It doesn’t mean I can’t do different films, it just means you’re not seen totally differently.”
As Deadline exclusively reported on Thursday, Kormákur is in final negotiations to direct adventure drama Apex for Netflix with Charlize Theron in final negotiations to star.
In Taormina, Kormakur told Deadline of Jeremy Robbins’ original script, “I haven’t seen anything like this in a long time.” He’s also been a fan of Theron who he calls “bold” and “one of the greatest actors of our time.”
Apex is “a wonderful opportunity” and “the kind of genre film that I think is in the vein of what I want to do, but I also think hopefully there will be projects in the vein of Touch which will come my way. You just want to make sure you have the utmost quality possible.”
Universal/Focus have world rights to Touch outside for Iceland, where Sena releases. Focus opened it domestically last weekend, and it came in above expectations. International rollout will continue next month. The film will go through Universal’s partners at Parco in Japan, where an early-January release is eyed. There are also ongoing talks about Touch playing the Hiroshima Film Festival.
Such a selection would be a sort of stamp of approval given the sensitivities around the subject. In Touch, we learn that Miko’s father narrowly escaped death when the atomic bomb landed on Hiroshima. Miko was born the same year, and her mother died shortly after from radiation sickness. Following Universal’s own Oppenheimer, a release of Touch in Japan is expected to add to the conversation.