Baltasar Kormakur

Real acting is about giving people an insight into a person, letting the audience in. ”

The Oath' seems like the perfect project for me, coming off the back of a big-scale adventure film like 'Everest.' I want to delve into an intimate, dark and psychological world where the characters are claustrophobic. ”

When I write and develop things myself, I might work for a while on a script from a book, and then I go back and read the book and go back into it to see if I lost something: is there something there? ”

People talk about Hollywood as a myth, but in reality, when you make Icelandic movies and you want to get them distributed in the U.S., you're not really working with Hollywood. The movies I've been making, the first one I made, I made it with Working Title, but it was financed through Universal, so it became a Hollywood production. ”

I have no problems with remakes, and I think it's interesting. I mean, coming from the theater, we've been remaking 'Hamlet' for a hundred years, so it's no problem to me at all. A good story can be told in many different ways in different places; I just think it's interesting. ”

I don't see Hollywood as the big enemy, because this is where the money is, and not all of the companies are doing studio movies. I'm not tempted to sell out. If I'm going to become well known, I want it to be for something I'm proud of. ”

The thing about Iceland is that we are trapped there anyway, all of us. We have been trapped there for thousands of years. ”

It's important for cinema to keep on evolving: for people, and not only teenagers, to be able to go to a movie that has huge epic scope but has an intellectual and real story to tell. ”

When 'Iron Man' came out, I said, 'Oh - they are trying to have some fun.' It was a relief because every superhero movie had become so damn serious. Some people love that, but for me, it's a weird thing to watch. A man with a cape can have fun, but I won't listen to a lecture from him. ”

If you make a film too American, it won't travel. It will have no life outside of its own country. ”