Baldvin Zophoníasson


Baldvin Zophoníasson, or Baldvin Z, is an Icelandic film director. He was born 1978 in Akureyri. He is best known for his films Life in a Fishbowl and Jitters.

Career

Baldvin's first feature film was the Icelandic-language teenage drama Jitters, released in 2010. The film portrays "the confusion and excitement of being a teenager" It won the Children's Film Award at the Kristiansand International Children's Film Festival. His second feature was 2014 movie Life in a Fishbowl, co-written with Birgir Örn Steinarsson, which won at Edda Awards, Zurich Film Festival and Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, and gathered numerous award nominations. The film is an ensemble drama, set in the year before the severe economic collapse in Iceland in 2008. It portrays people from various walks of life whose lives intersect in unexpected ways.
Baldvin's next major project was directing the third season of TV series Case, created by Sigurjón Kjartansson and produced by Saga Film for Icelandic national television RÚV and Netflix. He directed 3 episodes of Baltasar Kormákur's Nordic Noir drama Trapped in 2016. In 2017 he released two documentaries. The first was titled Reynir Sterki: Beyond Strength and described the tragic life of vagabond strongman Reynir Örn Leósson. The second was Island Songs, a real-time multimedia project documenting the creation of Ólafur Arnalds' album Island Songs in various locations around Iceland. This was Ólafur's third collaboration with Baldvin, as he'd previously scored Baldvin's first two feature films.
A second collaboration with Birgir Örn Steinarsson, Let Me Fall, is slated for release in 2018.