Thorkell Hardarson and Örn Marinó Arnarson founded Markell Productions in 2001. They have been producing in-depth feature length creative documentaries on various subjects. Starting out by exploring the world of the legendary rock band HAM (2001) they went on to dissect the phenomena of Punk in Iceland (2004). After that they went on a 6-year long journey into the black hole of Geopolitics, the War on Terror and Falcon smuggling. The Markell brothers surfaced at Tribeca Film Festival in April 2010 with the intriguing and controversial Feathered Cocaine, stating the US administration and its various Intelligence agencies had proper knowledge of the whereabouts of Osama Bin Laden who had not been seen for some years by then. One year and one week after the premiere of Feathered Cocaine, Bin Laden was killed in Abbottobad. Feathered Cocaine was screened at some of the world’s most prestigious film festivals, including Tribeca Film Festival, Hot Docs and IDFA (where it received a nomination). Feathered Cocaine won the Edda 2011 Awards – the Icelandic Academy Awards for the best documentary.
Having had their share of the international intrigue of geopolitics and the money-powered carousel of the War on Terror, Thorkell and Marino moved on to producing and directing a lyrical wildlife documentary on the North-Atlantic Salmon – North-Atlantic Miracle and they are now in production on a feature-length documentary on the world of fashion, design and trend forecasting.