Stockholm Film Festival

On their way home from a night club, Steina and her best friend Styrja begin fantasizing about their prince charming with a capital C. Through Steina's younger sister, they obtain a fragrance for men which is so irresistible that they are convinced that it must belong to their prince charming. The hunt begins. The adventurous handsome Gunnar is deputy managing director at an almost bankrupt perfume factory. One day the managing director has an accident and dies. In his will he leaves everything he owns to his unknown daughter. Gunnar wants to take control of the company and decides to falsify the will. At which point the two girls who are going to change everything arrive: Steina and Styrja. The most incredible teenage fantasies abide in a winter landscape reminiscent of a barren rubbish-tip, where the cold reminds people of life's hardships. The description of the dreams and longing of these young women in the Icelandic film Dream Hunters is as devotionally reckless as idolization can be. It has an unusually sprawling structure, like a shredded diary in a waste paper bin. With a mixture of realism and absurd humour we see a spectrum of characters who mostly appear as sketchy caricatures, who tell of the rivalry between friends, alcoholic single-mothers and their escape from the everyday routines and young people coping with adult problems. The director opens in the spirit of an American college film but slides more and more into a subjective vacuum, where the young women's psychological hunt for a romantic ideal fails half-way and results in an uncontrollable but fateful course of events. In its own way, the film creates a piece of classic girl romanticism when Steina (like a Kristin Lavransdottirwith a Bjork complex, who does not know whether to act country girl or photo model) is torn between the security of her previous boyfriend or the unpredictability of chance passion. Dream Hunters is an Icelandic film with the theme: modern young people in Reykjavik. With influences from Middle Age sagas to MTV and British kitchen sink realism, the director and scriptwriter Ásdís Thoroddsen creates his own concept, at times almost surrealistic with, to say the least, unexpected elements and at times surprisingly comical. PC 

Orig. titel

Draumadísir

Medverkande

Silja Hauksdóttir, Ragnheitur Axel, Baltasar Kormákur

Producent

Martin Schlütter

Manus

Ásdís Thoroddsen

Foto

Halldór Gunnarsson

Musik

Einar A. Melax

Talat språk

Icelandic

 

Andra filmer från sektionen Northern Lights

Se alla festivalfilmer från 1996