Joachim Rønning is back in the water, directing Star Wars heroine Daisy Ridley in Young Woman and the Sea, the harrowing story of Trudy Ederle and the Olympic gold medalist’s determination to be the first woman to swim across the English Channel. It shouldn’t be a surprise that Rønning would be attracted to a woman bent on attaining the near-impossible, something that few men achieved — with some dying trying.
Rønning, first teamed with Espen Sandberg and more recently as a solo director, came from humble origins in Norway to become an eminently bankable Hollywood director. After debuting on the Salma Hayek-Pinault & Penelope Cruz pic Bandidas, the directors notched a Best Foreign Language Oscar nomination for Kon-Tiki, the quest by Thor Heyerdahl to cross the Pacific in a raft made of balsa wood. The 101-day voyage was as perilous as one might imagine, and the film looked epic on a small budget, especially for a movie shot on the water.
Rønning’s subsequent work on big-scale fare includes Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales and Maleficent: Mistress of Evil, and he’s in the middle of Tron: Ares, the Disney sequel. All reflect a search for the magic he felt as a child, watching E.T. for the first time.
Watch him talk about it above.
