Benedikt Erlingsson built a solid name for himself in Icelandic theater — as both actor and director — before making the move into film. That transition has served him well. His screen work, including Hross í hross, Kona fer i zíður, and the recent The Danish Woman on RÚV, has only deepened the respect he’d already earned on stage. For The Danish Woman, he took on directing and co-writing duties alongside Ólaf Agli Egilsson.
Speaking on Gunnar Hansson’s Mannlega on Rás 1, Benedikt was candid about where he came from. His mother is Brynja Benediktsdóttir, a celebrated director, and the actor Erling Gíslason is part of that same family backdrop. “I’ve always known I couldn’t escape being viewed as a theater child,” he said.
He started young — very young. His first acting credit was as an infant in a radio play, where his mother essentially wrangled the right emotional response out of him. “I was the crying baby that had to be edited in,” he recalled with a laugh. He went on to appear in New Year’s shows and eventually performed at Þjóðleikús.
When he finished his drama studies, it was frustration that pushed him toward directing. “I had this innate desire for control,” he said. That impulse, it turns out, shaped almost everything that followed.
A Theater Actor Turned Filmmaker
During his acting studies, Benedikt came under the influence of Pétur Einarsson, Guðjón Pedersen, and Kjartan Ragnarsson — “great theater personalities who inspired me,” he said. He’s always been drawn to theater’s willingness to put form before content, to let the way a story is told carry as much weight as the story itself. “The beauty of theater lies in its format; it allows for so much more experimentation than film,” he said. That restlessness found its way into The Danish Woman: at one point the protagonist steps out of frame entirely, leaving only the director and cinematographer visible. “It’s as if it exposes us,” Benedikt said. “I see myself as a theater artist who brings narrative techniques into the more stagnant realm of film and television.”
“I want to claim my identity as a theater person masquerading as a filmmaker,” he added.
The Mentor Who Ignited His Directional Journey
A lot of Benedikt’s confidence behind the camera traces back to one encounter — a meeting with Marek Kostrzewski, a Polish theater actor who had moved to Sweden after the Gdansk uprising. Kostrzewski came to the Icelandic Drama School as a visiting instructor through an exchange program with the Malmö School. Benedikt watched him work, signed up for a film course, and ended up producing six short films inspired by Strindberg.
“It was an immersion into high-profile projects right from the start, a deep dive into the world of theater and film,” he recalled. That period set the foundations for his directing career.
What struck him most about Kostrzewski was how he cut through the fog around acting rather than adding to it. “Marek had this renaissance quality; he made things simple,” Benedikt said. Where many teachers seem to relish the craft’s complexity, Kostrzewski stripped it back. That clarity gave Benedikt the confidence to step into directing with real conviction.
Insights from a Unique Teaching Method
One lesson has stayed with Benedikt for years. A student once challenged Kostrzewski on the relevance of monologues. Rather than explain, Kostrzewski threw a watch out of the window and told the student to go find it. As the student searched in mounting frustration, he started talking to himself — and Kostrzewski stopped him there. “That’s a monologue; it’s the mind’s dialogue with itself when it grapples with reality,” he said.
That idea — the mind talking its way through a problem — runs through a lot of Benedikt’s work. He also teaches alongside his aunt, Sóleyja Davíðsdóttir, at the Anxiety Treatment Center, where those same dynamics between inner thought and outward expression come into play.
A Warm Reception for The Danish Woman
All episodes of The Danish Woman are now out, and the series has attracted interest well beyond Iceland — France and Germany among them, thanks to a production setup that brings together Swedish, Danish, Finnish, and French partners. “We’re ambitiously attempting to market this globally,” Benedikt said. A Swedish premiere is set for March and a Danish one for April. “We hope the Danish woman captures hearts worldwide,” he said.
The series had its festival debut at the Gothenburg Festival, where audiences turned up for back-to-back screenings. “People sat through six hours of content without a single walkout,” Benedikt noted, clearly pleased.
He was particularly taken with how Swedish viewers read the protagonist’s struggle against social expectation. “Humor is often embedded in these portrayals. I’m curious to see how the Danes react to this portrayal,” he said.
Acknowledging the Strength of Matriarchs
Both The Danish Woman and A Woman Goes to War put strong women at the centre — something Benedikt connects directly to the matriarchs in his own life. “The strong mother often shapes the character of our lives,” he said. He draws a line to Astrid Lindgren’s Lina Longsock, that anarchic, authority-defying figure who refuses to be told what she is.
Benedikt has three daughters, and he says they’ve taken Lina’s spirit to heart. He values the conversations his work starts — the arguments, the readings that differ from his own. “It’s exhilarating when people engage deeply with these themes and reflect on their meanings,” he said. “We do this not only for ourselves but to establish a dialogue within our contemporary landscape, even as we aspire for international reach. Ultimately, The Danish Woman is a mirror, reflecting the essence of our surroundings and experiences.”
The full interview with Benedikt Erlingsson is available on the Mannlega episode online.
