ECHO premieres at Locarno Film Festival
Echo, by writer/director Rúnar Rúnarsson, had its world premiere at Locarno Film Festival yesterday. Very positive reviews of the film have been published from Variety and Screen Daily. In Variety it says: "Once a sense of rhythm is grasped, things fall into place, and audiences will exit the cinema debating their favorite scenes, recalling a wealth of graceful, humane interactions."
Echo; As Iceland gets ready for Christmas, a peculiar atmosphere settles over the country. An abandoned farm is burning, a children's choir sings Christmas carols, chicken carcasses parade through a slaughterhouse, a museum employee is arguing on the phone, a young girl makes her mother try on her new virtual-reality headset… In 56 discrete scenes, Echo draws a portrait, both bitter and tender, of modern society.
Since Rúnar did his first film The last Farm and got nominated at Cannes film festival 2006 he has done films like Sparrows and Volcano that have travelled film festivals all around the world like Cannes, Toronto, Sundance and San Sebastian and won over 130 international prizes.
The pre-production started in 2018 when the project got chosen to participate in the Cannes Atelier and since then the excitement has escalated.
Jour2féte handles distribution and international sales and Sena distributes the film in Iceland.
Director and script: Rúnar Rúnarsson
Producers: Live Hide, Lilja Ósk Snorradóttir, Rúnar Rúnarsson
Director of Photography: Sophia Olson
Production design: Gus Olafsson
Costume design: Júlíanna Lára Steingrímsdóttir
Editor: Jacob Secher Schulsinger
Sound: Gunnar Óskarsson
Music: Kjartan Sveinsson
Casting director: Vigfús Þormar Gunnarsson
Production companies: Nimbus Ísland, Pegasus Pictures
Co-production companies: Jour2Fête, Bord Cadre, MP Productions