Baltasar Kormakur

The winters are too long, and there's only one airline, so it's difficult to escape when you feel frustrated or claustrophobic. The audience for our films isn't very large, so it's difficult to support an industry. But, Iceland is beautiful. Sometimes it's hard to imagine living anywhere else. ”

For me, the source material can come from anywhere. It can be a poem, it can be a dream, it can be a movie, as long as the end part of it is interesting - that's what it's about for me. ”

Vikings were pretty brutal, but also very educated people. They were salesmen, businessmen who started raiding when business wasn't good. That's why they had such great boats. ”

In the case of 'The Deep,' because of the people involved, the talent and the real lives of people who died, I wanted to make the most honest film I could. And sometimes that's the best way to go: Just make the best version of the film you can. ”

I've always looked at filmmaking as a lifestyle. There is no decision of when you go to work. It's a way of life: you're thinking about scripts; you see things and think, 'That could be interesting'... I don't think about my work as, 'Today I'll work on this, this and that.' It just comes to me. ”

Throughout the history of Iceland, men have been lost at sea; every family in Iceland is connected to that kind of story. ”

I am a big fan of movies that don't take themselves too seriously. You know you won't change the world, but have fun. Movies like 'Butch Cassidy' I enjoyed tremendously, but it didn't alter my opinion of the world. ”

I really wanted to make 'Everest' visceral, real. One thing that amazed me when I was scouting in base camp is the volume of Everest: It's humbling. I wanted to find a way to bring that to the screen. One way was 3D. ”

We will work on ways to digitally enhance Everest, matching it with Dolomites and Everest, but I'll do everything physically first. If there's no other way, then I'll go to CGI. ”

I'm the first Icelandic director who started working on U.S. movies. There are others behind me now, but it's like when Bjork opened the door for Icelandic musicians to work abroad. We're such a closed-off country, but Bjork broke the spell. And I'm glad it was a woman who did it. She showed us we could break this barrier. ”