The ninth annual Reykjavík Shorts & Docs Film Festival begins this week; it will run from January 27 to 31 in Bíó Paradís. Among films screened during the festival is Yes yes by María Reyndal, based on interviews with Thai women living in Iceland.

The short film Svefnrof (“Half-Awake”) by Ragnar Snorrason, which features a night watchman at a mall who finds a severed head in a garbage bin and tries to figure out what happened, will also be screened, as stated on kvikmyndir.is.

The festival also includes the film Skáksaga (“Chess Tale”) by Ingvar Stefánsson, starring Ingvar E. Sigurdsson and Thorsteinn Bachmann. It tells the tale of two men who start a game of chess but end up violently fighting each other.

In other film festival news, the 11th annual French Film Festival, held by the French and Canadian Embassies in Iceland and Alliance Française in cooperation with Háskólabíó and Graena ljósid, is currently taking place in Reykjavík.

It will run at Háskólabíó (the University of Iceland Cinema) in the capital until February 3 and then continue in the Borgarbíó cinema in Akureyri February 12-16. Ten films will premiere during the festival.

All of the films screened have English subtitles except two, The Adventure of Adèle Blanc-Sec and White Lies, which have Icelandic subtitles.