To Icelandic filmmaker Grímur Hákonarson, his country’s national sport seems rather homoerotic. In “glima,” or folk wrestling, two opponents maintain a fixed grip on each other’s harnesses, which encircle their waists and thighs. Locked in this apparent embrace, they attempt to wrestle each other to the ground as they step clockwise in a slow, measured movement resembling a waltz. A code of honor called “Drengskapur” demands that the wrestlers always exhibit fairness, respect, and caring towards one another.

In the short film Wrestling, training partners Elnar (Björn Ingi Hilmarsson) and Denni (Halldór Gylfason) take “Drengskapur” one step further when they fall in love. “I’m trying to describe a relationship through this sport,” said Hákonarson, whose 2004 film school short Slavek the Shit went to the Cannes Film Festival. “For example, instead of showing them having sex, I show them wrestling. So I use this wrestling as a metaphor for the relationship.”

Soon after Hákonarson finished the first draft of this tale of blue-collar wrestlers living in the isolated Icelandic countryside, he heard about Ang Lee’s roughneck romance Brokeback Mountain. “I got a bit shocked, and I was thinking about canceling the whole thing,” he said. But after securing financing from the Icelandic Film Centre and Nordic Film & TV Fund, he decided to move forward and begin filming in October 2006.

Despite inevitable comparisons to Lee’s film, Wrestling isn’t about society’s bigotry as much as it is about the men’s reticence to form a relationship in light of Elnar’s marriage. “If you can still find some prejudices, then it’s mainly in the countryside, because Iceland is very liberal towards gay people,” explained Hákonarson. “It’s not a big problem like in Texas or something.”

While Hákonarson was raised in the city of Reykjavik, his parents hail from rural Iceland. “It really helped when I was making this film, because it has this Icelandic countryside touch,” he said. “It’s like a typical Scandinavian country film: people are silent, depressed. But I’m also making fun of that. I try to have some humor, like when Denni’s practicing wrestling [alone] in the cowshed. He’s throwing himself in the hay. The humor is more based on the images than on the conversations.” But the country setting nearly brought tragedy when falling rock narrowly missed the cameraman’s head during a scene shot in a kilometer-deep tunnel of solid rock.

While many audience members outside of Iceland have asked Hákonarson if “glima” is a made-up sport because it is so exotic, it is real and indicative of Hákonarson's intent that the heart of the film is a universal love story about ordinary people. “My films have got social issues, working class people, local people,” said Hákonarson, whose next project is a feature-length comedy about an Icelandic family running a parapsychology company. “And humor,” he added.