I want to work with directors who can tell intimate stories in a way that feels universal and with a big enough scope and depth to travel outside of Iceland.

I consider myself more a European director who is from Iceland than an Icelandic director.

If you make a film too American, it won't travel. It will have no life outside of its own country.

I used to sail a lot in all kinds of weather, competing on small sailboats in the ocean. And I travel a lot in Iceland on horses every summer, through the wild areas where there's no inhabitants and there are volcanoes.

It's important for cinema to keep on evolving: for people, and not only teenagers, to be able to go to a movie that has huge epic scope but has an intellectual and real story to tell.

The thing about Iceland is that we are trapped there anyway, all of us. We have been trapped there for thousands of years.