Discoveries from Iceland World Cinema

Tells the story of the social worker Marta and her complicated relationships with the people around her.

Documentary following airline stewardesses on a flight from Iceland to New York. We see a regular day in the air and how they spend their time in the big apple.

1973, the Vietnam War is coming to a close as the world buckles under new attitudes and changing priorities. Far from the din of history, in a small village in southern Iceland, a young man falls for a soldier at the nearby US army base.

A political comedy about the effects of the apparent discovery of gold in the sands near a small community on Iceland's south coast. Troops from the American NATO base "invade" the territory, journalists from Reykjavik arrive and the morals of the local inhabitants quickly turn topsy-turvy.

A precious pearl necklace is stolen from a dying widow and repeatedly changes hands because many covet it, leaving behind a long trail of blood.

Canto V out of XIII

Thousands flock to Austurvöllur, where the future of Iceland's independence hangs in the balance. Emotions run high and firm beliefs simmer beneath the surface. When opposing ideologies collide outside the Parliament building, chaos erupts into violent clashes. This is the story of the riots of March 30, 1949.

In the midst of seismic activity, a young woman is forced to confront the mistakes of last night at her best friend's farewell party.

When a desperate filmmaker gets an unexpected job as a wedding cameraman, she accidentally uncovers several secrets between the bride and groom.

An intimate portrait of prolific Icelandic musician Bubbi Morthens over a year as he records a new album, navigates family life, and confronts his legacy.

Through beautiful images and with a camera at eye level with its young protagonists, we gain a rare insight into what it means to grow up in Afghanistan after the Taliban took power.

Halla Ólafsdóttir & Amanda Apetrea are an award winning choreographer duo often known as Beauty and Beast. Their work challenges written and unwritten rules of patriarchy so when #metoo breaks out at the exact time as their biggest tour yet, it seems like life’s finally reflecting art. Happily ever after - or?

Death encounters three lost souls and tries to help them on their journey into the afterlife.

A woman on a walk in the woods stumbles upon a bizarre and hypnotizing creature.

A grieving man drags his friends out to rural Iceland in order to reconnect with his girlfriend who died there the year before, but the line between reality and the supernatural blurs.

Amateurs Paradise is a heartfelt and humorous film, that dissects humanity’s impulse to document through four men across generations. Using personal archives and modern reflections, it explores the tension between memory and performance, asking whether we film to preserve truth or to rewrite it. From a father’s decades of home videos to an influencer’s curated digital life, the film examines how we connect, reflect, and shape identity through the act of recording. Blending the private and the public, Amateurs Paradise reveals what it means to hold on to life’s fleeting moments—and why it matters.

There are few things that Tía loves as much as Snati, her grandpa's old dog, and so she will give her all to keep him safe. She drags him along with her on an adventure over the plains and through the forest to get home, only to realize their paths don't lead to the same destination and it may be time to say goodbye.

What begins as an ordinary day on his grandfather’s farm turns into a journey through memory, absence, and loss. With each chore, a grandson edges closer to a devastating revelation and a last duty of love he never expected to face.

In early 1940s Iceland, a female medium with a unique connection to the supernatural approaches a grieving husband and police detective in Reykjavik, promising news from the afterlife.

A contemporary telling of an ancestral story about an encounter with an unidentified light, written by Ida Gertrude Materne (b. 1914).

During an entrance exam for drama school, Anna must confront emotional turmoil from her past—or risk losing her lifelong dream.

A glimpse into the life of a couple who create and share their love for jewelry-making, running a shop together on Skólavörðustígur. The film explores how their journey began and how they divide and share the work.

Mud can tell us a lot about the planet's deep past and possible future - and here is the film that translates its silent language into an imaginative stream of thought.

This is the way the world ends.

A MiniDV exposure malfunction recorded at Dettifoss on April 26, 2024.

He becomes a gay man with his brother. Then later that day...

Turn of the Century is a musical documentary featuring the Icelandic supergroup Team Dreams. The film is a first-person view of teen life in Iceland during the 2000s and features all the songs from the album Dream is Murder by Team Dreams.

Reykjavík was covered in graffiti around the turn of the century. It’s a way of expression that the graffiti writers consider art, but authorities view as vandalism. In a certain underpass tunnel, a city worker called Jói was king, and he had his own view on the topic.

A silent short. Water, footsteps, darkness and light. Shot and edited entirely on a phone in a single day.

Darryl Francis (55), an ex-convict in Los Angeles can't get a job after returning from prison. In the hope of providing for his wife and three kids, he dreams of becoming a professional writer. After many failed attempts, Darryl reaches out to an Icelandic friend and writing therapist for help. Together they decide to document his battle against procrastination and past pain, in the hope of unlocking his writing talent.

Each fall, 50 girls meet up at rock camp in Togo. They play and sing gospel music, which they know from church, and dance to African rap and pop. A five-day rock camp with teenage girls who still dream.

It’s estimated that 500 to 600 suicide attempts are made each year in Iceland, with a population of less than 370 000 people, and that between 30 and 50 people take their lives. We can’t keep quiet about these high numbers. Through people’s deeply intimate and touching stories, we try to understand what it means that someone takes their life. What happens inside a - human being in need? Sometimes there are warning signs, sometimes the suicide is completely unexpected. When our loved one take their life we are thrown into an abyss of sorrow and pain. As we face life again we also understand the power of love and our ability to heal. Out of the Darkness is a documentary opening up the taboos about suicide.

The documentary deals with volcanic eruptions in Iceland and the ash from them, causing damage to vegation and effecting global climate. The main part deals with the eruption in Eyjafjallajökull 2010. Furthermore the eruptions in Surtsey 1963, Heimaey 1973 and finally Skaftáreldar 1783.

Silent Voices tells the story of Icelandic nature that is in danger due to dam and powerplant projects. Furthermore, it touches on the story of the land that has already been sacrificed for heavy industry, around 80% of produced electricity in Iceland goes directly to multinational heavy industry corporations.

The Pitch tells the story of Melavöllurinn, Reykjavík’s main sports arena and meeting place until the 70’s. The Pitch served as a melting pot of ideas for Iceland’s newly acquired independence in 1944 that brought back hope and prosperity in the years to come.

Young people in the ages of 19-24 years old, record themselves and their every day lifes, their experiences, thoughts and daily routine in a 10 week period of videoblog. Hlöðver is gay and lives with his boyfriend in Hnífsdalur, Ríkey is a student at the Icelandic film school and just moved to the big city from Grundarfjordur. Jón Karl is twenty years old a student at the High School in Mosfellsbær and is a manic depressive and Helena Guðrún is a 24 years old single mom that studies at the University of Iceland and drives a taxicab occasionally in the evenings.

The summer of 2004 two engineer from Seyðisfjörður found a three-blade broach and an oval broach high up in the mountains of East Fjords in Iceland. Archaeologists arrived on the scene under the direction of Sigurd Bergsteinsson. They discover remains of a Viking woman, some jewelry and over 500 pearls. Who was this woman? What was she doing in the mountains, all by herself? The finding was unique, never before have so many artifacts from a Viking woman been found in an open country. The film is produced in collaboration with the National Museum of Iceland and The Archaeological Heritage Agency of Iceland.

This film explores the beautiful and honest relationship between two women, of a different age, running a catering service in downtown Reykjavík. How did they meet? How do they get along? What keeps them together?

This dreamlike and poetic documentary follows a year in the life of the Icelandic rock group Sudden Weather Change.

This film follows the Icelandic musical icon Bubbi Morthens as he lays the ground for his umpteenth solo album. Originally a live recording of the album was to mark the return of the troubadour and raconteur he was known as in the beginning of his career. Following the recordings this film presents a portrait of a national icon we all think we know, but few of us really, truly do.

A documentary about the singer Kristinn Sigmundsson.

The film 'Busca la vida' is about young people who have chosen to live on the streets in Malaga - southern Spain, 2003-2004. The film is a glimpse into their lives in times of change when authorities tightened measures against street people as means to drive them away from the city.

The scholar Sveinn Bergsveinsson, a Communist in the 1930s, was trapped in Berlin by the outbreak of World War II and forced to work for the Nazi propaganda machine. Returning to Iceland, sick with tuberculosis, he found himself branded by both sides of the cold war political divide and barred from academic work. In desperation, he emigrated to East-Germany where he became a respected professor. He always hoped to return home but died in East-Berlin in 1988, a year before the wall came down. He left behind a wealth of documents, photographs, film and voice recordings which form the basis of this narrative.

This is a documentary about a teacher from Reykjavik in search of her roots and interested in the preservation of old tales and history. Our story opens in the remote Mýrar cemetery in the West Fjords. The narrator is standing by her forefathers´ grave, which is overgrown and neglected and she senses her dead ancestors call out and implore her to do something. Beautiful irons cross lies on the grave of a young boy who died in the middle of the nineteenth century. Her curiosity aroused, the narrator discovers the story behind the iron cross memorial by talking to the archaeologist, Gunnar Bollason. She then goes on to discover similar iron crosses in cemeteries elsewhere in the southwest of the country. We visit the town of Þingeyri and watch as the broken iron cross from the family grave is repaired by the skilled craftsmanship of Kristján Gunnarsson at his engineering workshop, a workplace with an unbroken tradition going all the way back to 1913.

Þjórsárdalur is one of those remarkable beauty spots in Iceland; a green oasis amidst black lava fields and glacial rivers in South-Iceland. The film shows its versitility, such as lush greenery, waterfalls and rock formations, living a good view into the valley's unforgettable beauty.

Documentary on child trafficking in Cambodia. Every year tens of thousands of young girls are trafficked and sold into slavery, sexual abuse and prostitution. We follow these girls, interview young girls that currently are or have been sex slaves and girls that have been saved from this plight and NGO employees. We ask questions like: What makes parents want to sell their children and how does the child trafficking take place? What is being done to stop the problem? The Cambodian nation is still recovering after the genocide in the seventies where a quarter of the nation was executed. The social infrastructure is in ruins and corruption is severe. One fifth of the nation is illiterate and poverty drives children to work instead of attending school. Half the nation lives under the poverty line and earns less than a dollar a day. Poor families in the remote rural areas are the most vulnerable to the trafficking and we follow the fortunes of one such family.

The face of Cambodia is a documentary about the city Angkor Wat. Angkor Wat was lost for 700 years and is one of the Seven wonders of the World. The population of Angkor was around a million and the city covers more than a 400 square kilometer area.

A documentary by Ásthildur Kjartansdóttir focusing on two Thai women who originally came to Iceland to work in the fisheries but later settled with two Icelanders in the Öxarfjördur-region in the North-East of Iceland, one of them a shop-keeper and the other a sheep-farmer. The film not only shows daily life in rural Iceland near the Polar Circle but also the couples' trip to Thailand where life and surroundings are dramatically different to Öxarfjördur.