Discoveries from Iceland World Cinema

A film about the "Icelanders' Day" in Gimli in Manitoba in 1975, commemorating the 100 year settlement of Icelanders in Canada.

Gravity is a comically tragic short film that playfully deals with the concept of reality tunnels. On the surface it is about friendship, love, space aliens, cocaine and handicap. Not necessarily in that order.

Harpa goes back home to Iceland to visit rapper Erpur Eyvindarason. They go to a film shoot together, drink beer, smoke cigars and talk politics. They also reflect on an interview that Erpur did with a Nazi 25 years ago and decide to visit what is left of him.

The expedition is lead by Simon Yates, known as “the man with the knife”, who became world famous when the film “Touching The Void” came out. The Ama Dablam expedition went through despite a serious accident on the planned route in 2006 when six climbers were killed in an avalanche. Ama Dablam is a film about two ordinary guys and their adventure with one of the most famous mountaineers of our times. It’s an adventure film for general audiences.

Filmed against the background of the mountainous north of Iceland with its magnificent scenery, this film shows the life of a lone farmer in an isolated fjord, whose inhabitants have slowly deserted it for the relative ease and comfort of the city life. This farmer, however, is too attached to his land and persist in remaining there, despite the difficulties he has to confront. Through his eyes and those of his peers, the trend of Icelandic society away from traditional agriculture towards industrialisation is viewed with sympathetic regret.

In December 2021, Icelandic art star Ragnar Kjartansson opens a Russian oligarch’s museum by re-staging the American soap Santa Barbara live. Witness this jaw-dropping avant-garde critique of the Soviet empire play out on the eve of Putin’s brutal invasion of Ukraine.

A couple shares an intimate moment in their bedroom. His attempts to arouse her go seriously wrong, resulting in a series of emotional, physical and hydrological explosions.

A guy gets caught while sneaking out of bed after a night with a blonde beauty. Caught is a short story which contains a little bit of love, considerable violence, but mainly humour. It gives us an insight into a situation that most people can relate to, a situation that a lot of people have already experienced, but everyone desperately wants to avoid… or don’t they? Though the film is short, it’s larger than you expect.

3 short films in a series based on ideas from an exhibition of 100 drawings in Gallery Langbrók in Reykjavík, 1983. The Concert: A devil is playing the piano. The Bathtub: Jesus is taking a bath. The Artist: An artist is painting out in the open and gets a nasty surprise.

Best friends forever and ever revolves around an intensive friendship between two women and the blurry lines between friendship and love.The movie explores the emotions of a young woman who believes she has found her soulmate: Her best friend. She refuses to seek further, -why would you need anyone else in your life than your best friend?

Óli sees his sister take part in a matchboxcar rally, and has dreams of following in her footsteps.

A beautiful filmed short documentary about the life cycle of the arctic fox. A treat for nature and animal lovers alike.

Dramatized educational film about alcoholism in the past and the present.

Interweaving family lore, mythology, science fiction, and digital abstraction, Thuy-Han Nguyen-Chi’s film follows the collaboration between the artist and her mother, Thuyen Hoa, who fled Vietnam after the end of the American War via a near-calamitous sea journey. Oscillating between voices, visual registers, and timescales—was it seven months or seven thousand years?— Into The Violet Belly offers up an image of its multiplicitous structure: a massive digital swarm, tiny avatars of migrating bodies, swimming in an infinite blue.

A one-man stage play with Laddi, Iceland's most cherished comedian.

Eldsmiðurinn (The Blacksmith) is a film about an eighty year old craftsman and inventor, who lives alone on the east coast of Iceland. He claims to have made the first multi-gear bicycle and he has also converted a clock into a calendar. This remarkable personality is seen at work and talking about his world views. The film also shows the point of contact between simple craftsmanship and more developed technology in areas like transport, wind-generators etc. It also represents the collision between world-views as represented in the news media (TV, radio) and traditional ways of thought, often tinged with mysticism, in isolated areas of the countryside.

The film begins in the early hours of the morning of January 23rd 1973. A mile long fissure had ripped itself open on the outskirt of the fishing village on Heimaey, a small island of the Vestmannaeyjar group, off the South Coast of Iceland. Glowing ash and molten lava was spewed over the sleeping town. We see the evacuation of the 500 inhabitants, both by air and by sea. We witnes unbelievable scenes of bellowing craters, flowing lava, burning and collapsing buildings. We learn of the agony and uncertainty of people made homeless, and of the measures taken by the Civil Defence to deal with a disaster of an enormity rarely faced by so small a nation.

Comedy, philosophy, gunfights, music, and chases.

Brothers are at odds and clash with tragic consequences. A fun film from emerging actors

A woman in her early thirties escapes a heavy mental fog into a dreamscape where she becomes unstoppable. Through storms, jagged lava, and wounds, she gradually regains presence and the will to live. VON is a visual and sonic journey of inner healing — from numbness to light — that leaves space for the audience to complete the story.

“A Song for Europa’ is one of the key tracks from Jóhann Jóhannsson’s release ‘Orphée’ on Deutsche Grammophon. Typically for Johann, the work is a beautifully atmospheric composition, one that immerses the listener into the strange recordings of the ‘Numbers Stations’: a category of shortwave radio station broadcasts characterized by readings of number lists, letters and coded messages from a forgotten era. It is to these lost, lonely voices that Johan has turned, capturing the enigmatic transmission of encoded information to persons elsewhere, and reflecting them back within a new context. In response, Studio AKA director Gergely Wootsch has created a considered and thoughtful animated film, which crosses literal boundaries and thresholds as it drifts along a desolate cold war landscape, following the haunting voice as it searches for a listener.

Everywhere Elva goes, people stare at her. And it´s no wonder, because she turns in circles, stamps her feet and twists her body in every other step. She is thirty years old and has the worst case of Tourette syndrome her doctor has ever seen. At the same time she has excessive amounts of wit and humour, and constantly makes fun of herself. This documentary is made at the point where Elva has reached her limit. Her ticks have grown so powerful she can no longer take care of herself and her little son. Her last chance is a risky brain surgery where electrodes are planted deep in her brain, an operation which is still in the experimental phase for Tourette´s.

A Kurdish mother and daughter who fled as refugees to Iceland get the news that their Immigration visas will expire in the next 48 hours.

An interwoven story of four characters in a small Icelandic farming community of Budardal Valley who are locked in a constant struggle for survival where the pressures of free market economy and the modern age are phasing out old traditional values. Bjarni (50) and his mother Sigrún (78), Mundi (93) and young farmer Skjöldur (35) are represented in this lyrical insight into a community that stuggles with market middlemen that press down produce prices, leaving increasingly less profit for the farmers themselves and threatening the fundamentals of their existence. Despite these adversities the community refuses to throw in the towel.

Built for a sleek and secure future the iconic Bank of Industries, was erected in downtown Reykjavík in the 1960s. Some fifty years later, we step inside the building and witness its geometrical and material dissolution before the backdrop of everyday life.Through a visual narrative of building materials returned to the earth, we face the interplay between humanity, machines, and the elements. It's an interment of a building corpse at the end of the age of disposable building culture.

In September 2015 there were 400 years since the slaying of 32 Basque whalers in Iceland.

Two sailors are under pressure from the fishing company to fish a lot of fish, but other problems arise.

The story of Reynir Örn Leósson, who became famous in Iceland in the 70's for being the strongest man in the world. With supernatural strength and his connection to god, Reynir achieved phenomenal things and his world records still stand today. But his harsh childhood shaped him into a man with dark secrets, an abusive alcoholic, desperately trying to get recognition from society all his life.

The lives of friends Daníel and Randver get much more complicated when they are forced to deliver a home order from the store where they work: a tube television… which they have to carry by hand. What should have been a short and simple trip turns into an ordeal when they get lost on Úlfarsfell and encounter all kinds of difficulties—such as mysterious elf-women, enigmatic beings, and pretty girls.

‘On The Surface’ is a 4mn animation about a young Black woman who goes swimming in the Icelandic sea and reflects on her experience of having a baby in a country that feels nothing like home. As she enters the freezing water, she relives her traumatic pregnancy and postnatal depression. Soon her swimming eases. Being in the wild and facing her fears is helping her heal.

First and only Icelandic Sci-Fi film. Nonni falls asleep while watching the fireworks on new years eve. He wakes up in an aircraft heading to the Moon.

A young woman rushes to work after she crashes the car of a mysterious man in a leather coat.

A lyrical documentary on the miraculous lifespan of the North-Atlantic Salmon. Shot in pristine Iceland in and around one of the few rivers in the World that are home to the migrating Salmon and have not been manipulated in any way. No dams - no salmon fry stocked by man - everything in the river regarding the Salmon is untouched by man. In these unspoiled conditions the filmmakers shot hundreds of hours over a period of more than two years. Now the fruit of their labor is in your hands - prepare to immerse in the beautiful world of the North-Atlantic Salmon. Be one with this magnificent creature - swim with the Salmon - die with the Salmon and experience the rebirth through the next generation of the King of fishes.

Handball legend Ólafur Stefánsson returns to coach his hometown team after a successful career as a player abroad. Over the next year and a half, he discovers that coaching is not quite what he thought it would be, but his challenging journey leads him toward his one true passion.

There is a long tradition of hunting seals in Iceland. This film is about one such hunting trip on the South-east coast of Iceland where farmers catch the seals in nets in the glacial waters stemming from Vatnajökull, Europe's biggest glacier.

Megas has been praised and criticized for the lyrics and it has been said that he threads on a landmine and occasionally the mines explode. His songs have been banned from the national radio for being too crude or touching on taboos.

In September 2009 the Icelandic Search and Rescue team receive an emergency call from the Republic of Thule. An earthquake has destroyed the capital of Cave Town. The population is 1.5 million. Thule does not have armed forces. Due to inland unrest the UN has a permanent presence in the country.

Waste takes place in an imaginary civil war in the hitherto peaceful and pacifist Icelandic society. The film tells the story of a soldier who increasingly questions the usefulness and purpose of wars.

Between 1979 and 2016, trans people in Norway were forced to undergo sterilisation, depriving them of their right to bear children. Kris has dreamed of becoming a father since kindergarten. Anticipating a euphoric pregnancy, he exudes a sage positivity despite past and present injustices. Together with Sindre and David, and their devoted families, Kris becomes a part of the resistance forging change

Elín Methúsalemsdóttir and her family, from the old farm Bustarfell, take us through the history of Icelandic food traditions, from the settlement period to the present day. In the beginning, Icelandic cooking was characterized by scarcity, and Icelanders had to be extremely resourceful with the little that nature provided. Now, however, the Icelandic kitchen exists in the modern world, influenced by immigration, food tourism, and global trends in farming and cuisine.

A documentary about the Icelandic poet Jónas Hallgrímsson

Documentary about an unusual beauty contest in the desolate area of Iceland’s West Fjords where wrinkles and cellulite are a plus.

A modern businessman surrounded by all the trappings of success, picks up a beautiful woman who is hitchhiking along a lonely stretch of road in the south. Quiet, mysterious, the woman is an artist on the way to Meðalland to sketch. Always ready to take advantage of an opportunity, the young man adjusts his itinerary to help the beautiful artist, and with luck, he thinks, help himself add another notch to his sexual belt. But all is not what it seems in this world. The question arises as to whether all the expensive aids of modern affluent society can help him avoid what appear to be forces that transcend time - or is it all imagination, or hallucination, or both?

Erik Leiser takes us on an unforgettable journey across the Icelandic landscape as he mixes live action and pixilation to produce an enchanting, timeless short film.

A story based on the folk tale of the ghost Djákninn from Myrká set in modern day Iceland.

The story of Sóley is about freedom and oppression. Set in Iceland in the dark eighteenth-century, it relates the adventures of a young farmer whose horses - symbols of his independence - are missing. In his search for the horses and his freedom, he journeys across the uninhabited wastelands of the mountainous interior of the country. Here he encounters the legendary figures of folk tradition. The elf-maiden, Sóley, accompanies him on his way across the highlands. She is the incarnation of the dreams woven by the farmers of Iceland, poverty stricken and oppressed - dreams of a better and more humane way of life, envisaged as the lot of supernatural beings, concealed in the harsh, dramatic landscape of Iceland.

I think she’s a Musungu is a documentary about 8 years old Erna Kanema. She lives in Reykjavik with her Icelandic mother, Zambian father and little sister. She takes her Icelandic grandmother and uncle’s family on an adventurous trip to Zambia to meet her relatives there. Erna Kanema reflects on her identity as a white, black or brown girl.

A documentary about the miraculous survival of an Icelandic fisherman, after his boat sank off the shores of the Westman Islands in mid winter. All the crew drowned except one, Gudlaugur Fridthórsson, who swam five and a half kilometers in the ice cold sea and then walked barefoot over a field of sharp lava to reach help. Specialists have made tests on Gudlaugur to determine how he managed to survive seven times longer than any ordinary man under these conditions.

A documentary about Icelandic women and the occupying army during World War II, and how the government reacted to the so called “situation” and how they treated the “situation girls”.