NFB Profiles
Browse
Gunnarson Sturla
Born in Iceland and raised in Vancouver, Sturla Gunnarsson is one of Canada's best-known and most accomplished film-makers, equally at home directing feature films, documentaries and television drama. His films have been recognized with a multitude of awards, including Emmy, Genie and Gemini Awards, a Prix Italia and an Oscar nomination.
Recent feature films include the medieval epic Beowulf and Grendel (2006), starring Gerard Butler, Stellan Skarsgaard and Sarah Polley; the comedy Rare Birds (2001) starring William Hurt and Molly Parker and an adaptation of Rohinton Mistry´s Booker short-listed novel Such a Long Journey (1998), starring Roshan Seth, Om Puri and Naseeridin Shah. Between them, the films received over 20 Genie Award nominations and were among the top grossing Canadian films in the years they were released.
Television drama includes Scorn and 100 Days in the Jungle, each of which won Gemini Awards for best television movie, as well as DaVinci´s Inquest, for which Gunnarsson won a ¨Best Directing¨Gemini, Intelligence and the Canada/UK WW2 mini-series Above and Beyond starring Richard E Grant, Lianne Baliban and Josh Ackland, for which he won the DGC Award for outstanding achievement in directing.
Documentaries include the post-apartheid love story, Gerrie & Louise, which was described by the New Republic´s Stanley Kaufmann as "the gripping account of a journey through delusion to enlightenment." His recent film Air India 182, opened the 2008 Hot Docs Festival, where it was described by Canadian Press as "a movie so gripping and suspenseful in its retelling of a large-scale tragedy that it frequently seems like a tautly written drama instead of grim reality." In his latest documentary, Force of Nature: The David Suzuki Movie, David Suzuki, the iconic Canadian scientist, educator, broadcaster and activist, delivers what he describes as "a last lecture - a distillation of my life and thoughts, my legacy, what I want to say before I die."
Gunnarsson was elected President of the Directors Guild of Canada in May 2008.
» Watch the Force of Nature's playlist at NFB.ca
