Bye Bye Bluebird

Two best friends and like-minded eccentric misfits, Rannvá and Barba, travel from Denmark to their birthplace, the Faroe Islands. From the moment of their arrival, this reunion with their childhood island home and its conservative residents does not pass quietly. The girls arouse both curiosity and outrage with their bizarre modern appearance and emancipated behavior.

But the girls are on a more important mission. Both live with old secrets, especially concerning their families, and now they want everything out in the open. They get a lift from one of the locals, Rúni, who also has a skeleton in his closet. The trio goes on a journey — not just through the beautiful landscape of the Faroes — but into their past.

About Katrin Ottarsdóttir Katrin Ottarsdóttir was born in Tórshavn, the capital and largest city (but still just 20,000 people) in the Faroe Islands, an archipelago north of Scotland, halfway between Norway and Iceland. The Faroe Islands are an autonomous territory but a part of the Kingdom of Denmark. Although she didn’t have a television growing up, Katrin loved seeing movies at the cinema.

She left for Copenhagen in 1976 to study at the National Film School of Denmark and is the first person from the Faroe Islands to ever study film, graduating in 1982. In 1989, she received the ever first prize for a Faroese film at the Nordische Filmtage Film Festival for her debut feature ATLANTIC RHAPSODY: 52 PICTURES FROM TÓRSHAVN. The documentary paints a portrait of a day in the life in the town of Tórshavn and is the first-ever feature film from the Faroe Islands.

Ottarsdóttir writes her own screenplays and also directs her films. Most of the actors in Ottarsdóttir’s films are Faroese, drawing from the territory’s rich theater community.

The road movie BYE BYE BLUEBIRD received top honors in 1999 at Nordische Filmtage and the Tiger Award in 2000 at the Rotterdam International Film Festival. Her daughter Hildigunn Eyðfinnsdóttir stars in the feature.

Katrin Ottarsdóttir also directed, wrote, shot and edited a trilogy of film portraits of Faroese artists. The first of the films, NO ONE CAN ACHIEVE PERFECTION, about the sculptor Hans Pauli Olsen, premiered in January 2008. The second film, A LINE A DAY MUST BE ENOUGH, is about the poet, painter, and performance artist Toroddur Poulssen and premiered in September 2008. The third film in the trilogy, about the writer Joanes Nielsen, premiered at the end of 2009.

Ottarsdóttir is also an acclaimed poet. In 2011 she published a collection of poems in the Faroese literature magazine VENCIL, and in 2012 she published her first collection of poems, written in Faroese, with the title Eru Koparrør í Himmiríki? (Are There Copper Tubings in Heaven?)