Fantastic Fest 2011

Spiritual forces both real and imagined govern the lives of Oscar and Lara. Oscar is a small time tour guide obsessed with the macabre, poaching guests from the bigger players at the airport and bringing them to the elaborate haunted house he has created in the basement of their family home. But Lara? Lara is a true believer, a woman gifted with a second sight that allows her to speak with the dead and host séances for a small but fervent local community who wish to communicate with the recently deceased, with those who have passed to Summerland.

Their home life is odd but good on the whole. Good, that is, until outside pressures begin to wear the family down. Their teenage daughter takes up with a new boyfriend, a militant anarchist who runs a website devoted to debunking all things spiritual. Lara is an obvious target. And Oscar? Well, Oscar has plenty of passion but very little financial sense and the business is failing utterly. If he doesn’t come up with some quick cash, the entire family will be out on the street. Financial salvation comes in the form of a foreign art collector who wants to buy the ‘Elf Stone’ in the family’s back yard, the same stone that Lara believes supplies her powers. Will the cure for Oscar’s financial woes be worse than the disease?

Internationally known for directing dark thrillers JAR CITY and A LITTLE TRIP TO HEAVEN, Iceland’s Baltasar Kormakur steps into the producer’s role for SUMMERLAND. A fable about family and the magic of the everyday, SUMMERLAND draws on Icelandic myth and folklore to create a totally unique family drama. (Todd Brown)