VIDEO EXCLUSIVE: Ella Rumpf & Sverrir Gudnason On Fear Of Flying, ‘Northern Comfort’

Northern Comfort, a film by Icelandic director Hafsteinn Gunnar Sigurðsson, follows the story of a group of people, including the couple Coco (Ella Rumpf) and Alphons (Sverrir Gudnason), who are part of a “fear of flying” course. To finish the class, they must have one last flight to Iceland, but after a terrifying disaster, the crash survivors must navigate the cold Arctic tundra to fight their demons.

In an exclusive interview with uInterview at the South By Southwest festival in Austin, Texas, Rumpf and Gudnason revealed their fears of flying.

“I have, in years of my life, had my own fear of flying,” Gudnason began. “Because when I was a kid, I didn’t have one, then the more I flew, the more I felt the fear because somehow – you know, it’s like if you buy one lottery ticket, you don’t stand a chance, but if you’re like flying all the time, you might win the lottery – so I developed this fear of flying, but now it’s gone away again, but it was fun to get into this thing to shoot this because I think many people have this fear.”

“It’s really about how every individual confronts their fears and how they learn to embrace it, and everybody has a different way to do that, and it’s, I think, really funny to see every individual character in this overcoming these fears or trying to overcome this fear,” Rumpf continued. “I think that’s really the premise of this movie, like how you embrace your fear.”

The two also discussed their favorite scenes to shoot.

“I mean, all the scenes have been so fun to shoot with the whole crew,” Rumpf said. “I think so many really, really good moments that are unforgettable, but I think when we spent like three days in this belly of an airplane where we were shooting, that was shaking us, like having sick stomachs getting shaken in the airplane.”

“We also had a great day in the north of Iceland shooting in this beautiful lagoon,” Gudnason said. “Like it’s a natural lagoon out in the snow, and it’s as warm as a bathtub. It seems like it’s wonderful but we spent I think eight hours in that lagoon that day, which was just fine but it was an experience to just have bath pants on and just shoot for eight hours in the lagoon.”