The acclaimed Icelandic editor and producer behind some of Hollywood’s most kinetic films steps unexpectedly in front of the camera in Janaé Rachel Ballot’s deeply personal debut feature, which will receive its world premiere at the Reykjavík International Film Festival.
The question that started a film
Three years ago, over lunch in Los Angeles, Icelandic editor and producer Elísabet Ronaldsdóttir asked her longtime friend Janaé Rachel Ballot what sounded like a simple question: “Why don’t you make a movie based on your life?” Ronaldsdóttir, whose credits include John Wick, Atomic Blonde, Deadpool 2, Bullet Train and The Fall Guy, had recognised something cinematic in the contradictions of Ballot’s story: a Beverly Hills childhood far removed from the city’s glamorous mythology, marked instead by dysfunction, grief and the death of her mother when she was twelve. That conversation became Dissociated Me, an 84-minute hybrid comedy-drama written and directed by Ballot and produced by Ronaldsdóttir, Ballot, Matthew Monelli and Savannah Ballot.
When autobiography refuses to follow the script
Ballot initially approached the project as a conventional biographical drama, drawing on her previous experience developing true stories for the screen. Revisiting her own past, however, provoked flashbacks and dissociative episodes that made a traditional screenplay increasingly impossible. Rather than abandon the film, she changed its form: the attempt to make an autobiographical feature became the feature itself, blurring documentary and fiction as the filmmaker gradually lost control of the story she believed she was telling. For Ronaldsdóttir, the evolving production raised a larger creative question: how can something intensely personal be shaped into an experience in which other people recognise parts of themselves?
A producer becomes a character
As the project crossed countries, time zones and production schedules, Ronaldsdóttir’s role steadily expanded. She moved from being the friend who suggested the film to becoming its producer and creative partner—and eventually a character within it. Playing herself marks her unexpected screen acting debut, with Ballot presenting her not simply as an internationally celebrated editor but as the candid, funny and demanding friend behind the collaboration. The boundary between their real relationship and its cinematic representation gradually disappeared, allowing the Icelandic producer’s own influence on the film to become part of its narrative.
“You’re a hit”
Reality entered the film in a still more dramatic way when Ballot was struck by a car travelling at approximately 35 miles per hour during production. Ronaldsdóttir sent flowers to the hospital accompanied by a message displaying her characteristically dry Icelandic humour: “You’re a hit.” Footage recorded during the aftermath was ultimately incorporated into the feature, shifting its emotional centre. What had begun as a film about reconstructing the past became a story about accepting its discomfort, recovering a sense of presence and reclaiming the life that remains beyond it.
An independent film with blockbuster experience behind it
Ronaldsdóttir also connected Ballot with editor Yu Jung Hou, with whom she had worked on Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. Hou’s participation brought another productive contrast to Dissociated Me: artists accustomed to large international studio productions applying their experience to a small, self-financed independent feature. The result occupies an unstable but deliberate space between autobiography and performance, comedy and trauma, control and surrender. Early supporters have included American independent filmmaker Jay Duplass, who described the film as “courageous”, while Submarine Entertainment praised its “originality and heart”.
A homecoming at RIFF
The journey now comes full circle in Reykjavík, where Dissociated Me will receive its world premiere in Ronaldsdóttir’s home country. The film has been selected for the Icelandic Panorama at RIFF 2026, a programme bringing Icelandic filmmaking into dialogue with international cinema and presenting works considered to resonate with Icelandic perspectives. It will screen at Háskólabíó on Saturday 26 September at 13:15 and Thursday 1 October at 19:45, during the festival’s 23rd edition, which runs from 24 September to 4 October.
Elísabet Ronaldsdóttir’s two sides of cinema
The premiere will reveal a different side of Ronaldsdóttir during a festival that is also celebrating her command of large-scale filmmaking. On 26 September, she will join director David Leitch and producer Kelly McCormick for RIFF’s The Art of Taking Action masterclass, exploring how character, tone, emotion and collaboration shape action, comedy and genre cinema. Yet Dissociated Me demonstrates that the same principles can operate within a radically intimate film: a creative partnership, a personal history and a camera capable of recording the moment when a planned story transforms into something rawer and more truthful.
The beginning after three years
For Ronaldsdóttir, the film’s arrival in Iceland is the completion of a circle she set in motion with one question in Los Angeles. Her suggestion became a three-year creative journey, her friendship became part of the film and her work behind the camera unexpectedly placed her in front of it. Ballot has described the Icelandic premiere as feeling like “the beginning” rather than the end. Ronaldsdóttir’s own assessment is characteristically direct: “It’s raw and honest. That’s what matters.”
Suggested Online Sources
Official Dissociated Me website
RIFF: Icelandic Panorama 2026
RIFF 2026 programme and tickets
RIFF: The Art of Taking Action masterclass
London Film School: Elísabet Ronaldsdóttir
