In 24hourspeople of all cast simultainiously in Iceland and India go about their daily way, reflecting and therefore mirroring on mundane life on the opposite side of the planet. PROXIMITAS (CLOSENESS)

A poetic 70 min documentary about connections between people in India and Iceland. In Iceland a policeman is beginning his night-shift while a shoe polisher is setting up his service on a sunny morning in Pune, India. A priests wife remembers when she moved from the city to serve with her husband in the countryside in Iceland while a begger in India tries to get a days worth of food. A philosopher talks about his wild trip to India in the 1950's when two girls at an orphanage in India get presents from their support parents in Iceland. A taxi driver ...

... and on it goes in a filmlike poem. Music in the film is performed by Matthias and Andreas Hornschuh, Pavel Smid, Sigur Ros and Haraldur Ingolfsson.

Directed by Olaf de Fleur - Produced by Pooja Shetty

Proximitas Reviews

MORGUNBLADID
(ICELANDS LARGEST NEWSPAPER)
It is not the for the faint of hearted to define Proxiomitas, Olaf Johannessons newest film, to find for it a right place. Post-production is unusual and inventive in every way, truth be told a little bit different than even the most hardcore film fan is prepared to go see. It is full of poetic and philosophical ideas about different ways of life, different standards even though we are all equal. We all sleep on the same planet though habitats can be complete opposites. Mankinds one and only true possesion, “beautiful earth”, as Gagarin said when he saw it from space, the first human to do so. The name is Latin and means proximity (closeness) or something in common, and that tells it all really.
Proximitas takes place both in Iceland and in India, on two sides of the globe. It begins with confrontations between Icelanders and “immigrants” (is there a worse word for describing a human being?) from asia. Then it travels around, independent from time and traditional story-telling, between men and places. Both unknown as well as slightly famous Icelanders take part in this story, such as a fisherman, a former ministers wife in Kvennabrekka [a farm]; the writer Thrainn Bertelsson has some interesting ideas about what he expects from life; the philosopher Gunnar Dal, who himself has been to India, tells his tale of cities and people.
First and foremost Olafur stays among Indians who don´t have a pot to piss in and have in common the endless struggle for everyday survival. Visits the lowest classes at home, “rickshaw”-drivers and fishermen, the untouchables, class-less people, the lowest of the low who try to scrounge a living by begging in this splintered country. These enourmus group of people have to live by such poverty and insecurity to understand it you have to see it. They surely exist in great numbers in India but the government ignore them completely in every way but to break them down. And some of them actually don´t have “a pot to piss in”, to quote one of Olafs subjects.
In spite of all this suffering, which we wouldn´t be able to understand if Olaf hadn´t jammed our noses right into it, the have-nots appear as the most likeable of human beings that accept who they are and what they have, live life by what comes next and have their own hopes and dreams for a better life for their children.
So Proximitas goes in its unique way between close up and far off and it´s hard to see that Olaf has anything but succeeded in his quest to capture, and express, something which in its nature is hard to grasp. The movie is a combined sequence of flashes which the filmmaker closes in on in a very personal way. This is ambitious work and is full of respect for its subject which also enjoys compassion and the understanding of the director. The hard work pays off and the outcome is often an exotic and understanding journey. (S. Valdimarsson MORGUNBLADID)

RUV ICELANDIC NATIONAL BROADCASTING NETWORK
RAS2 (RADIO STATION)
I have always enjoyed Olafs work, it carries with it a originality and is always a very personal expression in the movie form. Is Proximitas a documentary? Not in any ordinary sense, it doesn´t try to deepen your knowledge of the enviroment or happenings, but shows you the human being, both up close and from a far.
In Proximitas is a international dimension, the movie sidesteps between Iceland and India, not to express opposites, but rather to show harmony, bringing people closer to one another.
In a traditional documentary you mostly see opposites, differences, and with that focusing on distances. Proximitas is not like this, it is not about “The wonders of India” or “the tremendous beauty of Iceland”, Proximitas shows how close to one another we really are, this is a small world, we are all co-travelers, the people in Kalkutta the same as the people here in Iceland. We experience the same things, we sense the same as them, we hurt in the same way. Proximitas is grand, beautiful web of the human experience.
The name of this movie is in the old language, Latin, as if pointing out that the movie isn´t just about showing you places near and far, but also showing you a past that is far away but also near, a past that is still here today.

Olafs qualities as a director shine through this piece, Proximitas, he attacks his objectives head on, knows tradition but is not afraid to go his own path. That is why his projects find a way to hold you in your seat without an ounce of boredom. In Proximitas, which is neatly thought-provoking, he has been able to fine-tune his abilities and this movie proves that he is on the right way and great things are in his future.
Proximitas *** (3/4) (Ó. H. Torfason)