A dark dramedy about clashing neighbors, director Hafsteinn Gunnar Sigurdsson’s film Under the Tree lets the ire between two couples reach its boiling point from underneath an intrusive suburban tree. True to the film’s title, a longstanding feud between two couples reaches its climax over a tree on Inga and Baldvin’s lawn that is causing too much shade on the property of Konrad and Eybjorg. Tempers flare, and through this seemingly superficial argument we learn more about the couples’ inner workings, including the events—some tragic—that have shaped them and their increasingly unhinged behaviors.
At times both heart-wrenching and hilarious, this multinational production (a collaboration between Iceland, Denmark and Poland) is sure to be remembered for its dueling narrative about neighborhood politics, marital strife and the understandable fury that stems from being at too close quarters with people you despise.
Director Biography
Hafsteinn Gunnar Sigurdsson is an Icelandic director, writer and producer born in Reykjavik in 1978. He studied film at Columbia University and the University of Iceland. Along with Under the Tree his filmography includes Paris of the North (’14) and Either Way (’11).
Press
"Each character resonates as a problematic individual whose foolishness escalates first into drama, then tragedy." - Hollywood Reporter