Benedikt ERLINGSSON

Born on May 31, 1969 in Reykjavík, Benedikt Erlingsson is a leading figure of contemporary Icelandic cinema, whose work is defined by a singular vision of nature, humanity and politics.A graduate of the Iceland Academy of the Arts in 1994, he first honed his artistic sensibility in theatre as a director at the National Theatre of Iceland. In 2006, he made a notable appearance in front of Lars von Trier’s camera in The Director, playing the role of Tolk. It was in 2013 that he broke onto the international scene with his first feature film as writer-director, Of Horses and Men, which won the New Directors Award at the San Sebastián International Film Festival and received more than 20 international prizes. A 2016 laureate of the Fondation Gan pour le Cinéma, he further cemented his reputation in 2018 with Woman at War, a portrait of a woman in solitary struggle against a multinational corporation to protect Iceland’s natural environment — a film selected for the Critics’ Week in Cannes and which earned him a second Nordic Council Film Prize. More recently, Benedikt Erlingsson has ventured into television with The Danish Woman, a spy series co-written with Ólafur Egill Egilsson, available on Arte.