CHILDREN

PARENTS

The dentist Oscar has been married for five years and lives with his wife and adopted children. On the surface everything seems to be fine but Oscar is not a happy man. His wants a baby of his own flesh and blood but it's not working out. When he finds out that his wife has been deceiving him all these years he decides it's time for a change.

Einar is a stockbroker who is very successful at work but not in his personal life. For the last couple of months Einar has been living at a hotel waiting for his wife to realize the terrible mistake she made by throwing him out.

Katrin Rose returns from Sweden where she has lived for eight years. In Iceland Katrin has an eleven-year-old son, brought up by his grandmother and now Katrin wants him back. Katrin gets a job as a dentist's assistant intending to make a fresh start but her troubled past catches up with her.

PARENTS is the indipendent second part of twin features by Ragnar Bragason and Vesturport exploring the roles of children and parents.

The first part, CHILDREN was released in 2006.

THE METHOD

When you write fiction you are limited by your imagination and you often create likeable characters that are acceptable to the audience. The danger is that you distance your self from real life and create characters that are one-dimensional.

With the films CHILDREN and PARENTS I started from a theme. I felt what sort of things I wanted to explore in an instinctive way and I wanted to make films in close co-operation with the actors, working profoundly on character to achieve authenticity in the acting.

Inspired by the working methods of Leigh, Godard and Casavettes, I got the theatre group Vesturport to collaborate with me. The actors were given the assignment of presenting a character they know from their own lives or loosely based on real people. They were to undergo practical training and explore particular aspects of their characters, such as getting to know their characters' jobs.

The following months we spent on improvisation and research to build up the characters and develop the plot. During this I decided how the characters were to be linked then retired to write the outline, which was primarily to distill the improvisations to their essence, give them structure and develop the story. And then shooting began, with no written dialogue, but each actor with an extensive sense of his character. The thing was to be, not to act.

CHILDREN and PARENTS are films made with passion felt by all who took part. First and foremost we wanted to tell the stories that matter to us, and hopefully would affect our future audience.

Ragnar Bragason

Vesturport • Klapparstíg 16 • 101 Reykjavík • Iceland • rakel (at) vesturport.com