A Police Comedy by an Icelandic Goalie

The director of Cop Secret, Hannes Þór Halldórsson, personally brought his first feature-length film to the Prague IFF – Febiofest. He’s been to the Czech Republic before – when he played in goal against the Czech team. The fact is that until recently Hannes made his living chiefly as a football goalie and made it all the way to Iceland’s national team. “When I tell my life story in a pub, it takes me two to three hours,” laughs the Icelandic guest during a discussion with viewers.

During his sports career, Halldórsson could focus only on shooting commercials, which doesn’t take that much time. Nonetheless, he filmed his feature-length debut at the turn of 2020/2021, when he was still playing. “At that time, we were working towards advancing to the world championships and on winning the league title, so it was a very demanding period of time,” he reminisces. However, he had been waiting for the opportunity to start proper filmmaking for a long time, and his football career had taught him that it is possible to dream about big things. “I started in the fourth Icelandic division and made it all the way to the world championships, where I caught Messi’s penalty shot,” recalls the goalie, whose idols include Petr Čech.

The acclaim with which Cop Secret was received also exceeded Halldórsson’s expectations. He planned this comedic tribute to the action films of the 1980s and 1990s that he grew up with mainly for the Icelandic public. Ultimately though, the film premiered in Locarno and has been collecting positive reviews around the world. At Febiofest, it is included in the Comedy competition. “In Reykjavík, police action films can only be made as a comedy, as we don’t have any super criminals or a Chinatown – the police don’t even carry guns. So I thought it would be humorous to further develop those erotic sparks between detectives that we see in all of these films. But it’s not only about entertainment. The protagonist is also battling his own prejudices, which opens an interesting discussion,” describes the film’s director.