Drama/Romance | Iceland | 1991 | Icelandic | 82 Minutes
A retired farmer, Thorgeir (Gisli Halldorsson) moves to Reykjavik, Iceland, to live with his grown daughter and her branch of the clan. When those living arrangements don't work out, he winds up in a retirement home, where he reconnects with Stella (Sigridur Hagalin), an old friend from his childhood. Quickly growing tired of life at the home, Thorgeir, accompanied by Stella, takes off in a stolen jeep so that they can spend some time alone and visit their rural hometown.
As a Senior Programmer at TIFF, Steve Gravestock oversaw the organization’s Canadian programming initiatives, including the Canada’s Top Ten film selection and the year-round See the North programme, a free showcase of homegrown classics. As a programmer for the Festival, he has selected Canadian feature films since 2004 and was responsible for selections from the Nordic region. Previously, he programmed films from the Philippines, India, Australia, and the Netherlands. In 2001, he organized and programmed a TIFF spotlight on Nordic films and programmed Nordic features for the Festival after that. Many of the films he has programmed have been nominated for Academy Awards, including Petter Næss’s Elling, Mikael Håfström’s Evil, Denis Villeneuve’s Incendies, Philippe Falardeau’s Monsieur Lazhar, Susanne Bier’s In a Better World — which won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 2011 — and Joachim Trier’s The Worst Person In The World.
Born in Montreal in 1926, Sylvia grew up immersed in the Yiddish world of her father, noted poet J.I. Segal. After receiving her M.S.W at McGill University, Sylvia studied art at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts under Arthur Lismer and taught in their children’s art classes. Sylvia was the director of the Committee for Yiddish at the U.J.A. for 10 years. Sylvia is dedicated to ensuring accessibility. She led a group that established assisted living apartments in Toronto.
Recognizing the prevalence of ageism, Sylvia realized a film festival could be the an affective tool to draw attention to and combat this form of discrimination.
