Top Icelandic actor-writer-producer Björn Hlynur Haraldsson (seen in “The Witcher,” “The Borgias,” “Lamb”), also the co-showrunner of the Series Mania winning show “Blackport,” is teaming up with “Lamb” co-writer Sjón on the Icelandic romantic tragedy “Klara.”
Showcased this week at Haugesund’s Nordic Co-Production Market, the project is being produced by Iceland’s leading talent hub Vesturport, in co-production with the U.K.’s Boom Films, run by Noomi Rapace agent Stella Harnström.
Oscar-nominated for his lyrics of Lars von Trier’s “Dancer in the Dark,” and co-writer of the epic “The Northman” with Robert Eggers, Sjón also serves as producer, together with Vesturport’s Rakel Gardarsdóttir and Agústa M. Ólafsdóttir.
Set in the early 1940s, the story turns on a female medium with a unique connection to the supernatural who approaches a grieving husband and police detective in Reykjavik, promising him news from the afterlife.
The seed for “Klara” came from an actual case in Iceland in the early 1940s involving a celebrated medium whose life intersected with crime, grief and wartime politics,” says Haraldsson who confesses having long harboured a fascination for “the blurred line between faith and deception, especially when people are grieving and looking for meaning.”
The multi-hyphenate talent says that after spending a decade in serialised drama “which is fantastic for character depth and long-form storytelling,” he felt “an urge to return to the concentrated power of cinema, where you can hold an audience in a single, sustained emotional and visual experience.“Klara” is the perfect bridge between those worlds: it has the layered complexity I love from television, but with the intimacy, atmosphere, and cinematic sweep of a feature film.”
Citing “the 1945 Gene-Tierney-led classic ‘Leave Her to Heaven’” as an inspiration for “the atmosphere, underlying ambiguity and lush Technicolor palette, Haraldsson says Iceland’s lavish landscape will also serve as a “vital reference – the sharp winter, the narrow wartime streets, a landscape that can shift effortlessly between beauty and menace.”
The busy actor, winner of a national Edda award for his supporting role in “Lamb,” is currently in early conversations with a few international actors for the leads, but he himself won’t play in it. “This movie requires for me to be fully behind the camera,” he says.
In Haugesund, both Haraldsson and Gardarsdóttir are on hand to find financing, co-production and distribution partners for the $5.8 million period drama. “I’m really excited about “Klara,” says the producer. “It’s such a compelling story. Everyone wonders what happens after we die, right? We’ve wrapped that universal question into a love story with thriller elements, which I think gives it a huge international appeal.”
Haraldsson, meanwhile, is preparing another commercially-oriented English-language project: “In a Lifetime,” which he’s written for Kristin Scott Thomas.
The talent collective Vesturport, which he co-founded, has several others projects spanning different formats and genres, including Season 2 of “Blackport” and “Frozen,” the musical to be staged in Copenhagen this year, according to Gardarsdóttir.
Haugesund’s New Nordic Films market runs through Aug. 22.