One of the fathers of the Icelandic film industry is self-taught and never went to film school. Born in 1954, he grew up in the times of the Vietnam war and was under constant influence of  American culture, whose one source was the NATO base near Reykjavik. From an early age, his imagination was also stimulated by indigenous folklore, full of mysticism and black humour. Since there was no Icelandic cinema in the ’60s, young Fridrik absorbed the westerns and sci-fi movies that were screened at the time. His passion made him develop cinema life on the island. During his time at  university he ran the first Icelandic magazine about cinema, he also started the first film club (screening nearly a hundred films a year), together with a makeshift studio open to everyone who wanted to gain practical experience. Soon after he began organising the International Film Festival in Reykjavik, an event which became a mecca for beginning artists.

Fridriksson decided it was too late for formal education and he started making films on his own. It was the beginning of a long and very rich creative journey – no Icelandic filmmaker has created more films than him, being both director and producer. He knew that cinema needs to gain national character and express the island’s culture through a style that would be expressive and distinct from other cinemas. He began with a series of intriguing documentaries from the ’80s. After portraying “The Blacksmith” (1981), he took up capturing the phenomenon of the Icelandic music scene in “Rock in Reykjavik” (1982) and “Icelandic Cowboys” (1984). “The Ring Road” (1985) remains an incredible experiment in which the camera is installed in a car and, every 10 metres, registers the view of the highway that surrounds the country.

After the feature debut “White Whales” (1987), he made “Children of Nature” (1991) – a reflective story about two elderly people, which placed Iceland on the film map of the world and was nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. In 1990 he started the Icelandic Film Corporation, which soon became engaged in producing numerous Scandinavian films and gave the young creators an easier start.

Every few years we can see a new film by Fridriksson, who is very popular on the island: his “Angels of the Universe” (2000) have been watched by half of Iceland’s population. The director does not stay aloof from autobiographical motifs (“Movie Days” from 1994 and the newest „Mama Gogo” from 2010). He interweaves his narrations with plots of folk tales full of ghosts, he portrays unique Icelandic landscapes with feeling. Sometimes he returns to documentaries, the example of which is “The Sunshine Boy” (2009), about a mother who is trying at all costs to help her autistic son.