A woman, her daughter, and the big bad wolf: A modern-day Reykjavík fairytale.
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You and Me is a new short film by Ása Helga Hjörleifsdóttir, starring Laufey Elíasdóttir, Gríma Valsdóttir and Snorri Engilbertsson. The film is ready and yearning for an audience, but it needs your help to get to the next stage of festival life and distribution.
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Ása Helga Hjörleifsdóttir
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The story came to me faster than anything I've written before. I was thinking about a about a recurring dream I had as a child: A nightmare, where the wolf from The Little Red Riding Hood was relentlessly knocking on our front door, doing everything he could to get in. I was so frightened, but a part of me was also curious about what would happen if he would come in, something that would no doubt happen in a matter of seconds... All these years later, the dream still resonates with me. Is the wolf in the fairytale a metaphor for the dangers of attraction and intimacy? This thought made me dive into a story that's as much about my childhood as it is about more recent experiences, a story where – in one night – the paths of childhood fears and wants meet those of adulthood.
Once upon a time, one cold, winter night in Reykjavík...
Girl meets boy. She's a single mom, and he becomes less charming than she thought he was after she invites him home. As things are getting out of hand, her young daughter wakes up, and roles become reversed as they deal together with the aftermath.
The Reykjavík nightlife in winter plays a crucial part, a setting as desolate as it is carnivalesque. Anything can happen, or nothing. Loneliness, desire and a kind of desperate playfulness fills the air, as you flee the cold from one bar to the other, hungering for something or someone and willing to go far for that precious thing: intimacy. But You and Me is no less about a 9-year old girl taking in the messy facts and truths of adulthood as she confronts and then comforts her mother after a night out gone bad. This film is a bittersweet ode to the city I grew up in, the city that I now find myself living in again after years of being away.
The film was written, produced, shot and edited in less than three months. It was made for close to no money, and is largely being distributed by myself. Earlier this summer I started submitting it to festivals, and already it's been selected to compete at five film festivals in five different countries! It's international premiere will be at Nordisk Panorama in Malmö in September, where it's up for the prestigious Best Nordic Short Film Award. That same week it plays at Helsinki Int'l Film Festival, followed by the Icelandic premiere at the Reykjavík Int'l Film Festival. In October it travels to Louisiana, to the New Orleans Film Festival and then back to Europe, to the Brest European Short Film Festival in France. Hopefully, this is just the beginning. My previous short film Ástarsaga screened at close to fifty festivals over a period of two years, and is still playing here and there.
And where do you come in, dear reader?
This is great momentum, but even so the distribution of You and Me is at a standstill: I need further funding to be able to really push the film into the world. And where does the money go? What exactly are the costs involved in short film distribution?
1. Further festival submissions. Some film festivals take no fee for considering your film for selection, but the ones that aren't free usually have a submission fee of €25-50 per festival. I submitted Ástarsaga to ca. 200 festivals, and anticipate a similar amount of submissions for You and Me. Granted that ca. half of these festivals are either free or I've received a fee waiver, that's still 100 festivals that charge:
· €25 x 100 = €2500
2. Print traffic costs. Once a film has been selected to a festival, the exhibition copy (the "print") of the film has to be shipped to the festival at the cost of the filmmaker. Sending such a package from Iceland to continental Europe (not to mention further afield) costs appr. €20-35. Based on the film's progress so far, You and Me could easily play at 50 festivals. Some fests might only want a digital download, and some shipping costs might be covered by the Iceland Film Fund, but even so we can assume that 30 of these shipments are on us:
· €20 x 30 = €600
3. Distribution and other publicity costs. Apart from the countless days of work submitting the film to festivals and promoting it on our facebook page and other media, there are other publicity items that await funding. Posters – or at least promotional postcards – need to be designed and printed, since many festivals ask for this. Another item is a 30 second film trailer that is in fact a required part of the press package for TV stations. In other words, we can't pursue television distribution without one. To sum up:
· Poster/postcard graphic design and printing: €1000 minimum
· Trailer: €400 minimum
In addition to this, there will be other costs that come up. But if we just look at those above-mentioned (which already include discounts, favors and professional people working for a very low fee), we're up to a minimum sum of €4500. For this reason, we are reaching out to you for help!
(Photo: Director Ása Hjörleifsdóttir, actress Gríma Valsdóttir and cinematographer Arnar Þórisson take a moment in between takes).
You and Me is the most personal film I've made so far, and making it was as difficult as it was magical. I can't thank my fantastic cast and crew enough, who worked tirelessly with me to make it happen. But why make a film if no-one can see it? All I long for now is to be able to share it with you and to send it off, and here is where you can help, dear people. Every small donation counts, and will help the film come to life, out of the editing room and into the world!
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