The Deep – Based on a True Story of One Man’s Survival

Based on an astonishing true incident that took place on the frigid seas off Iceland in 1984, The Deep fashions a modern-day everyman myth about the sole survivor of a shipwreck, whose superhuman will to survive made him both an inexplicable scientific phenomenon and a genuine national hero.

One of the most anticipated Nordic films of the year, Baltasar Kormákur’s The Deep recounts a modern myth that just happens to be true. In 1984, a fishing boat goes down miles off the coast of Iceland’s Westman Islands in some of the most forbidding seas on the planet, leaving the fishermen at the mercy of frigid and turbulent waters. Miraculously, one of the crew, Gulli (played with quotidian charm by Festival favourite Ólafur Darri Ólafsson, best known as Egill Elvis inCountry Wedding and the rabble-rousing best man in Kormákur’s marvellous Chekhovian update White Night Wedding), manages to survive, despite being exposed to temperatures in which most people wouldn’t have lasted a few minutes. Read More…

In 1984, a fishing boat sunk off the coast of Iceland, killing the entire crew with the exception of one man who survived by swimming several miles in frigid waters to live and tell the tale.

Based on a true story, The Deep is a modern-day everyman myth about the sole survivor of a shipwreck, who’s will to survive made him both a scientific phenomenon and a national hero. Read a review of the film at outsideonline.com