TOUCH selected as Iceland's Oscar submission
The film Touch, directed by Baltasar Kormákur, will be Iceland's submission for the 2025 Academy Awards. The film was selected by a committee of the Icelandic Film and Television Academy, which included representatives from key professional associations in the Icelandic film industry, as well as representatives from cinemas, film critics, and the Icelandic Film Centre.
Touch tells the story of Kristófer, a retired seventy-year-old widower. He embarks on a journey after the global pandemic has struck, hoping to find out what happened to his girlfriend who disappeared without a trace 50 years earlier. His journey takes him across half the globe, all the way to Japan.
The Icelandic jury writes: "Touch is a captivating story about humanity, intersecting cultures, and the search for answers to unanswered questions, where events and the fate of an entire lifetime are woven together into an unbroken whole."
The film is based on the novel by Ólafur Jóhann Ólafsson, published in 2021, and the screenplay is written by him along with Baltasar Kormákur, who also directs the film. The lead role is played by Egill Ólafsson, and alongside him are Pálmi Kormákur, Sigurður Ingvarsson, María Ellingsen, Theodór Júlíusson, Starkaður Pétursson, and Benedikt Erlingsson. Japanese actors Koki, Yoko Narahashi, Masatoshi Nakamura, Meg Kubota, and Eiji Mihara also appear in the film.
The film is produced by Baltasar Kormákur and Agnes Johansen for RVK Studios in collaboration with Mike Goodridge of Good Chaos in the UK. The worldwide distributor of the film is Universal, and its subsidiary, Focus Features, distributes Touch in the United States, where it premiered in mid-July. The film had it premiere in Iceland May 29th.
The final Oscar nominees are announced on January 17, 2025, and the award ceremony is on March 2, 2025.