"Everyone has something to hide"
Interview with Guðmundur Ingi Þorvaldsson about All eyes on me
"This is a film about human frailty and is, of course, a testament to the fact that everyone has something to hide," he says. Gudmundur Ingi Thorvaldsson, the film's producer All eyes on me (All Eyes on Me) is among the 82 feature-length films that grace the Reykjavík International Film Festival this year, coming from 65 countries, so there is quite a selection at RIFF this time, which starts at Háskólabíó on September 26th and runs until October 6th.
Guðmundur Ingi's film, directed by Canadian Pascal Payant, is a highly dramatic family story that has its world premiere at RIFF and tells the story of Gunnar (played by Guðmundur Ingi himself) who prefers the friendship of horses over people after losing his wife and son in an accident. But when he finally arrives at the scene of the accident at Krýsuvíkur cliff, he meets a Polish woman who has fled to Iceland to have an abortion, against the will of the child's father, so they are both on a rather unusual path in life.
… had to come back to Iceland …
This is the first feature-length film produced by Guðmundur Ingi, and the tenth from Pascal Payant's studio, but the two of them crossed paths when Guðmundur Ingi starred in Pascal's other work, April Skies, which tells the story of the impact that the death of one and the same person has in three countries. "While filming here in Iceland for that film, Pascal told his son that he had to come back here - and that was the case during the production of this new film of ours," recalls Guðmundur Ingi, saying that Pascal is a true magician in the profession, and that he not only writes his scripts and directs, but also edits his own films. "He knows better than most people how to travel back and forth in time and thus create tension - and our new film at RIFF this year is a good example of that," says Guðmundur Ingi Þorvaldsson, film producer and actor among others.