The fault was Sigourney Weaver. It happened precisely in an interview with a foreign edition of this medium. A quick quiz for those looking for recommendations from famous people. To the question of what was the food that she had liked the most on a trip, the Ghostbusters actress answered, with all her good intentions, that the lobster soup of a cafe lost in an Icelandic town, an escape that she could do in a day of filming Alien. the cafe was called bryggjan, located in Grindavik, another fishing village in Iceland, where you never would have stopped if it weren't for that recommendation from Sigourney.
“A priori it is a rather bland coffee in such an inhospitable place”, says Pepe Andreu, one of the directors of the documentary Lobster Soup (available at Filmin), dedicated to that coffee and its famous lobster bisque which has become almost mandatory stop on the Icelandic tourist route. But above all, dedicated to the spirit that this place transmitted as a refuge.
Outside view of Bryggjan.
Your colleague and co-director Rafa Moles came to Bryggjan by chance on a trip to the island in 2006, not following Sigourney's recommendation. "But when he entered and he had that feeling of warmth, with the grandparents, he felt that the place had something special," says Pepe. And he started thinking about the idea of the film. Pepe went to meet him the following summer and confirmed what Molés had felt. “Bryggjan is one of those places that house and make up the soul of a small community”, he says.
Thus was born in 1974. Krilli and Alli, two brothers, weavers of fishing nets, decided to use the ground floor of their premises in front of the port of Grindavík as a meeting place for neighbors and fishermen, a place to offer coffee, soup and warm conversation. "People get together and try to solve the world's problems, they leave, and the next day they try again," sums up Andreu. There are concerts, recitals and from time to time they meet to talk about the people who have left.
Winters are harsh in Grindavík.
When the two directors propose filming the documentary to the two founding brothers and owners of the premises, they respond in amazement and in a hurry: They have an offer to sell the building. That countdown then became a narrative thread, one more layer, definitive, to turn that coffee and its prized lobster soup into a metaphor and symbol of the responsible traveler and tourism.
“As travelers, we all want to find a real place wherever we go, to have that direct exchange with the locals,” reflects Andreu. But the more we go, the more we talk about it, the more the original place is transformed. “Traveling we can build and destroy”, he adds.
That led them to think "how we travel, to be aware of the footprint we leave in the destination" and the need to travel in another way. Bryggjan is a microscopic look at the brutal transformation that Iceland has suffered in recent years for tourism. Close to the well-known Blue Lagoon, the café became a golden corner for speculation, although the brothers sold the building convinced that they were still doing something good for their community.
“They have an optimistic and naive vision, if you will, of the result. They continued with the coffee thinking that it gave wealth to the town for the visitors and it was also a refuge for the people of the town”, says the director. "But reality has not accompanied." Although they have kept the name and appearance of the cafe, the upper floor is now a large restaurant to welcome more and more visitors. As a result, "The parishioners have stopped going, they no longer feel welcome."
Fortunately, remains Lobster Soup as a testament to what was. If documentaries serve to "capture and freeze reality", this one, shot on three trips between 2018 and 2020 (plus other visits without a camera), is the reminder that another type of tourism is possible.
And the lobster bisque? “Very salty, as it should be, and super good”, confirms Pepe Andreu.
'Lobster Soup' can be seen on Filmin.