About Us
THE COMPANY
Join Motion Pictures (JMP) is an independent, boutique production company that has produced mainly director-driven feature films for cinema with high artistic quality and international appeal. It was established in Reykjavík, Iceland 2007 and is owned by producer Anton Máni Svansson and writer-director-producer Guðmundur Arnar Guðmundsson
The company started producing short films and music videos with the ambition to forge close working relationships with writer-director talents. This dynamic has resulted in over 230 awards for films sold worldwide and competed at prestigious festivals such as Cannes, Berlin, Venice, Telluride, San Sebastian, Locarno, IDFA, Toronto, BFI London, and Karlovy Vary. Furthermore, JMP’s productions own approx. 40% of the total international awards for Icelandic film & TV productions over the last 10 years and have also received the following accolades: the European University Film Award in 2017, four nominations for the Nordic Council Film Prize, three nominations for the European Film Awards, and they've been Iceland’s contribution to the International Feature Award at the Oscars in both 2020 and 2022.
Anton Máni Svansson
Guðmundur Arnar Guðmundsson
Founder/CEO/Producer
Anton Máni studied psychology, philosophy, and scriptwriting at the University of Iceland before he began producing short films and music videos in 2004. He co-founded Join Motion Pictures in Reykjavik in 2007 with the ambition to forge close working relationships with writer-director talents. Svansson is an EAVE European Producer Workshop graduate from 2014, EAVE+ graduate from 2019, was appointed Iceland’s 2017 EFP Producer on the Move in Cannes and won a Lorens Award for Best Producer at Goteborg Film Festival the same year. He is currently the Chairman of SÍK – Association of Icelandic Film Producers and on the board of ÍKSA – the Icelandic Film & TV Academy.
Founder/Director/Producer
Guðmundur Arnar is an Icelandic director, writer and producer. He was born in 1982 in Reykjavík and raised in a home where dreams and intuition were an open topic. After graduating in visual art in Iceland, he studied screenwriting in Denmark. During a Cannes Cinéfondation Residency, he developed and wrote his first feature, HEARTSTONE, which premiered at Venice Film Festival. In his following feature BEAUTIFUL BEINGS, premiered in Berlinale 2022, he confirmed his strong sensitivity for dynamic storytelling that explores human relationships through a unique poetic visual style.