Icelandic actress Hera Hilmar hopes people can unite to “keep existing” in a world fraught with political and environmental challenges.
The star plays the strong female lead in Mortal Engines, a film which imagines a future shaped by a Hobbesian struggle between warring peoples in their quest for limited resources.
Hilmar has said that there are lessons to be drawn from the film, based on the novel of the same name by Philip Reeve, and that people should unite to decide the kind of world they want to live in.
Speaking at the premiere of the steampunk epic in London, Hilmar urged people to change their way of thinking and listen to other viewpoints.
She said: “I think there are things happening in the world that are very difficult to take. I hope we can change that and find a way to unite as a whole to keep existing in this world.
“It’s about what do you want for your own good and what do you want for the whole, and maybe that doesn’t always come together, and maybe we need to change our ways of thinking and listening to the world outside of our own world.”
Hester is their only hope. #MortalEngines pic.twitter.com/cikN13DW8e
— Mortal Engines (@mortal_engines) November 9, 2018
The actress, 29, has said that the responsibility to rebel and change problems in the world does not only fall to young people, and that everyone can take inspiration from acting on principle.
She said: “We all kind of do stand up for what we believe in. Rebellion has always kind of being associated with youth, but it doesn’t have to be. It is the young element in all of us that says ‘this is what I want for the future, this is what I want to be, and this is the world i want to live in’.
“When you see people stand up for what they believe in it’s heartwarming. And it makes us believe that we can live in world that we want to live in.”
Hilmar plays an errant assassin, a disfigured character who seeks to take down the film’s main antagonist, played by Hugo Weaving.