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Guðmundur Arnar Guðmundsson’s dreamy “Beautiful Beings,” which is Iceland’s entry for the Oscars this year, is about what used to be called juvenile delinquents; it observes a group of boys with little or ineffectual parental supervision as they test each other and comfort each other and get into trouble. The pace is languorous, and the Icelandic settings are so lovely that the problems the boys have tend to seem less important or troubling than they should.

Balli (Áskell Einar Pálmason) lives in what is described by the other boys as a “bum’s house,” but the red and blue exterior of his home is gorgeous, and though the inside isn’t too clean, the soft light coming from the windows and the swaying curtains in the breeze make it look inviting. Balli is being bullied at school, and a boy hits him in the face with a burned tree branch,...

Four young boys come of age in Guðmundur Arnar Guðmundsson’s textured yet maudlin kitchen-sink drama Beautiful Beings. Guðmundsson’s sophomore feature (and Iceland’s Oscar submission) oddly mashes together the bleak nihilism of a Larry Clark feature with flashes of magical realism, never really synthesizing the two competing styles. While compelling in individual scenes, especially as the boys navigate their increased anger at the world, Beautiful Beings ultimately whiplashes between too many ideas and subplots to create a coherent thematic through line.

We begin following Balli (Áskell Einar Pálmason), a young boy who is brutally bullied at school. After a particularly violent incident in which he is beaten with a tree branch, he makes the local news and is forced to wear a face mask to cover up his injuries. At this point the narrative switches to Addi (Birgir Dagur Bjarkason), the one who assaulted Balli. Addi takes an interest in the quiet boy,...

Beautiful Beings (Berdreymi) is an Icelandic film written and directed by Guðmundur Arnar Guðmundsson starring Birgir Dagur Bjarkason, Áskell Einar Pálmason and Viktor Benóný Benediktsson.

Premise

A teenage boy, raised by a mother who considers herself psychic, takes a bullied kid into his group of violent misfits. As the group’s troubles escalate toward life-threatening situations, an inner voice awakens in the boy and, with the help of his mother and his new friend, he manages to find his own path.

Release Date

January 13, 2023 (United States)

Beautiful Beings (2022) Director

Guðmundur Arnar Guðmundsson

The director graduated with a degree in fine art and then studied screenwriting. His short films have been presented at numerous festivals including Cannes and Venice. His debut feature Heartstone premiered in the Venice Days Competition in 2016 and went on to receive over 50 international awards.

Cast

Birgir Dagur Bjarkason / Addi

Áskell Einar Pálmason / Balli

Viktor Benóný Benediktsson / Konni...

Often, when embarking on the recent Variety tradition that is this feature — designed to highlight some of the year’s best yet least-Oscar-likely performances — one particular turn will emerge as the poster child. A performance that, for many reasons, really ought to have a shot at Oscar but, being in a language other than English, has little chance. This year, that slot goes to Vicky Krieps who, in Marie Kreutzer’s “Corsage,” does not so much play Empress Elisabeth of Austria (a role previously defined by Romy Schneider in the saccharine “Sissi” trilogy) as entirely reimagine and reclaim her.

Rather like with Mads Mikkelsen in Thomas Vinterberg’s “Another Round,” Krieps has the kind of stateside profile that will help “Corsage” stay in the conversation for the best international feature film Oscar shortlist. But the odds of her getting an individual best actress nod remain far slimmer — a shame, given...

"Some things aren't ours to affect." Altered Innocence has released an official US trailer for an indie drama from Iceland titled Beautiful Beings, which is getting a small US release in art house theaters starting in January. This premiered at Berlinale at the start of the year, and it also screened at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival, and tons of other fests including Brussels, Helsinki, Calgary. A teenage boy raised by a clairvoyant mother takes a bullied kid into his gang of violent outsiders. Described in reviews as "an Icelandic coming-of-age tale radiant with violence and tenderness." The film stars Birgir Dagur Bjarkason, Áskell Einar Pálmason, Viktor Benóný Benediktsson, Snorri Rafn Frímannsson, Aníta Briem, Ísgerður Gunnarsdóttir, and Ólafur Darri Ólafsson. It's the latest feature film from Icelandic writer / director Guðmundur Arnar Guðmundsson following his 2016 debut Heartstone. It looks damn good! Worth a watch. ›››

View the Post: Official US Trailer for...

A sensitive gang leader befriends a bullied teenager in Guðmundur Arnar Guðmundsson’s well-made but ultimately unrewarding film

Icelandic film-maker Guðmundur Arnar Guðmundsson’s new movie is the followup to his much-admired 2016 debut Heartstone, about the relationship between two teenage boys. The theme of bullying from that film, and its keynotes of sensuality and vulnerability, are detectable also in this well-made but in some ways unrewarding film which declines to take narrative responsibility for its inevitable, climactic act of violence, whose legal aftermath appears finally to vanish in favour of some vaguely defined coming-of-age friendship-blossoming between the two leads Addi (Birgir Dagur Bjarkason) and Balli (Áskell Einar Pálmason).

Addi is a delinquent teen who leads a gang of bullies: scary tough guy Konni (Viktor Benóný Benediktsson), who is already well known to the police, and Siggi (Snorri Rafn Frímannsson), a nerdy gang member, lowest down the food chain. But Addi...

Who knows why a sight as pitiful as 14-year-old Balli (Áskell Einar Pálmason), the unwashed, neglected child of an abusive stepfather and a largely absent mother, inspires a protective instinct in some kids, and a vicious one in others? Who knows why, at times, a protector can himself become a bully? Guðmundur Arnar Guðmundsson’s beautiful and cruel second feature boasts an outstanding juvenile ensemble cast. But almost more than it stars any of them, it stars the ebbs and swells of an inescapable legacy of heteronormative male violence, that fills childhoods with dark, shameful corners that no pale, bright splashes of Icelandic sun can ever warm. In the end, boys will beat boys.

Balli is fleeing another day of peer humiliation and adult inattention at school when three of his schoolmates catch up with him and administer a thrashing so bad it makes the local news and forces him...

Aligning itself with the bleaker coming-of-age films, Guðmundur Arnar Guðmundsson’s Beautiful Beings takes on the glamour and the anxieties that define teenagehood. Through the 39-year-old’s lens, the brutality and camaraderie of these formative years blend seamlessly while conjuring a contemplation of friendship, violence, and abuse that is as humanistic as it is unsettling.

The place is Iceland, and the time, probably not today considering social media’s absence and some rather old-school technology. We meet the film’s protagonist in Addi (Birgir Dagur Bjarkason) as he mockingly calls a victim of bullying, and incidentally his schoolmate Balli (Áskell Einar Pálmason) “some total nerd” when the latter makes the news after having been brutally assaulted by his peers. Addi may not be a bad guy after all, though - he and his friends, Konni (Viktor Benóný Benediktsson) and Siggi (Snorri Rafn Frímannsson), later take Balli under their wing. Addi also possesses a peculiar vision-involving.

The program announcements continue for the 72nd Berlin International Film Festival this week, with the full Panorama line-up now confirmed.

Adding to the initial titles unveiled back in April are films including Alain Guiraudie’s Nobody’s Hero, which opens the strand this year.

Also confirmed today were the titles that will participate in the Berlinale Series Market and Co-Pro Series event this year.

Taking part in Berlinale Series Market Selects will be The Fear Index, the upcoming show from Left Bank Pictures that is set to star Josh Hartnett, as well as projects from Keshet, Viaplay and Globo. See the full lists below.

Tomorrow, Berlin chiefs Carlo Chatrian and Mariette Rissenbeek will unveil the 2022 Competition line-up at an event that kicks off at 11Am Cet.

Panorama Additions:

Aşk, Mark ve Ölüm

Germany

by Cem Kaya

World premiere / Panorama Dokumente

Baqyt (Happiness)

Kazakhstan

by Askar Uzabayev

with Laura Myrzakhmetova,...

French auteur Alain Guiraudie’s political drama “Nobody’s Hero” has been set as the opener of the 2022 Berlin Film Festival’s multifaceted Panorama strand, which has announced its full lineup.

The latest feature from Guiraudie, who is best known for his 2016 “Staying Vertical,” takes place in Clermont-Ferrand, central France, where a terrorist attack triggers some paranoid dynamics involving a young homeless man, a middle-aged sex worker and her married lover who have taken refuge in a building. The film’s cast comprises actor-director Noémie Lvovsky, Jean-Charles Clichet and Doria Tillier.

The ten-title Panorama Dokumente strand, which runs concurrently with the feature films, comprises previously announced transgender-themed doc “Nel Mio Nome” (“Into My Name”) by Italian director and producer Nicolò Bassetti. Elliot Page has come on board as executive producer to support the doc which observes gender transition from a female to a male identity of four characters within a...