Iceland’s Oscar© 2023 Submission for Best International Feature: ‘Beautiful Beings’ with a Special Interview with Director Guðmundur Arnar Guðmundsson

A teenage boy adopts a bullied misfit into his gang of outsiders. Left to their own devices, the boys explore aggression and violence but also learn about loyalty and love. As their behavior escalates towards life-threatening situations, one, Addi, raised by a clairvoyant mother, begins to experience a series of dreamlike visions which tentatively pull him back from the edge as the film takes us on a path filled with danger.

Watching this film, I was inevitably drawn back in time to 1991 when my friend and contemporary, the Icelandic director Fridrick Thor Fridrickson was nominated for the Academy Award for Children of Nature, the only Icelandic film ever nominated for Best Foreign Language Film. It was the first of six of his films submitted to the Academy, more than any other Icelandic director.

(Ágúst Guðmundsson, Baltasar Kormákur and Hrafn Gunnlaugsson have each represented Iceland…