“We’re filming with Apple TV+, Amazon, Netflix”: how Iceland became the kingdom of films and series

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In Grafarvogur, a northern district of Reykjavik, buffeted by a gale-force wind, trucks filled with fertilizer have given way to a parade of dark cars. In this environment of stone and cement, it's still too cold for kayaking tourists to poke their parkas out. In a few years, the immense factory and its storage warehouses planted facing the Arctic Ocean have become an imposing film studio. At the top of the gray concrete building that the villain of a James Bond film, a lover of brutalist architecture, would not have disowned, the master of the house is waiting.

In Iceland, a country with a population of only 400,000, everyone calls him "Baltasar," and if Baltasar Kormákur, a former actor turned successful director and producer, is slightly late on this June afternoon, it's because the founder of RVK Studios is coming out of a meeting with the ministers of Foreign Affairs and Culture. On the agenda: the economic growth of series and cinema, which have become a major source of income for a country…

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