Savior
Savior is about a lonely teenage girl's quest for independence. Forced by her neglectful parents to spend the summer in a camp for much younger children, Kaja runs away. What she encounters on her journey are the dangers of the exotic Icelandic wilderness and her deepest fears.
28:00 minutes
Narrative, 35mm, color
Thesis
Screenwriter: Erla Skuladottir
Producer: Erla Skuladottir
Editor: Christopher Dillon
Cinematographer: Brian Hubbard
Erla Skuladottir
In her native Iceland, Erla Skuladottir produced and directed a documentary series about Children's Diseases for the Icelandic Television Broadcasting Station that was featured at the George Pompidou Center in Paris and won Best Documentary of the Year as one of the best Scandinavian documentaries.
She graduated from NYU's Graduate Film Program at Tisch School of the Arts. She has written, edited and directed and shot over 10 shorts, both narrative and documentaries. Her documentary "Master and Servant" has gone to film festivals such as Amsterdam Documentary Film Festival and Clermont-Ferrand in France. She won the Director's Guild of America Award for Best Female Student Filmmaker 2004 and was also nominated for the same award in 1999. She received the Nestor Almendros Award in Cinematography for her work in the short film, "Lion Tamer".
Her thesis film, "Savior" has been shown at film festivals all over the world. The film won the Audience Award for Best International Short Film at the Austin Film Festival, and six awards at the First Run Film Festival in New York, including Best Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Lead Actress and Best Original Score, as well as the Wasserman-King Award's 2nd prize for Best Film and a Microsoft Media Award at the same festival. "Savior" won the Best Student Short Film at the Nashville Film Festival and 2nd prize at the First Look International Student Film Festival for Best Student Narrative Short Film. Moondance Film Festival awarded "Savior" the Spirit of Moondance Award and the Audience Award for Best Short Film. The Orinda Film Festival awarded "Savior" the Audience Award for Best Short Film and La Pedrera International Film Festival in Uruguay awarded the film the Best Dramatic Short award as well as Best Actress. It won the Outstanding Fiction Film Award at the Beijing University Student Film Festival At the San Francisco International Film Festival "Savior" was one of the top 5 nominee of the festival as Best Narrative Short Film. "Savior" was also awarded the Golden Eagle Award from Cine Foundation in Washington DC. Most recently, "Savior" was a finalist for an Academy Award consideration for Best Short Film 2004.
Currently Erla is writing a feature in New York.
