Producer Sigurjón “Joni” Sighvatsson has worked on so many different projects that it’s hard to sum up his career. The trailblazing Iceland-born, U.S.-based film, music video and TV producer has been behind David Lynch film and TV hits, Julian Schnabel’s groundbreaking Basquiat (1996), a soccer documentary, Kathryn Bigelow’s The Weight of Water (2000) and K-19: The Widowmaker (2002), as well as Lynch’s landmark series Twin Peaks (1990-1991) as well as iconic 90’s hit Beverly Hills, 90210.
The principal of Palomar Pictures also famously co-founded Propaganda Films in 1986, which, back in the day, produced a third of all music videos in the U.S., including early works by Zack Snyder, Spike Jonze, Gore Verbinski, Michael Bay and co-founder David Fincher.
This week, Sighvatsson is attending the 79th edition of the Locarno Film Festival, where he will be honored with the Raimondo Rezzonico Award in the Swiss town’s Piazza Grande on Thursday evening, Aug. 6. The festival will also be screening two key films from his career: Lynch’s Cannes Palme d’Or winner Wild at Heart (1990) and Philippe Parreno and Douglas Gordon’s French soccer doc Zidane, A 21st Century Portrait (2006).
In a Zoom interview before traveling to Locarno, Sighvatsson talked to THR about the power of Lynch and Bigelow, how Donald Trump’s talk about cryptocurrencies could play into film’s future and his work on a 2022 film about MKUltra, the CIA LSD project that is also getting the David Chase series treatment.
