Screenings Include:

Friday, May 10  –  Children of Nature with Fridrik Thór Fridriksson  

Saturday, May 11 – As In Heaven with  Kristín Jóhannesdóttir

Sunday, May 12 – The Icelandic Dreamwith Róbert I. Douglas

Thursday, May 16 – Golden Sands 

Friday, May 17 – Jar City

Saturday, May 18 – When the Raven Flies

Sunday, May 19 –Nói the Albino

Tuesday, May 21 –Life in a Fishbowl

Wednesday, May 22 –Under the Glacier

Wednesday, May 22  – Rams

Children of Nature (Börn náttúrunnar) – May 10 @ 6:30 pm w/ Fridrik Thór Fridriksson

The breakthrough feature by Fridrik Thór Fridriksson opens as the aged Thorgeir (Gísli Halldórsson) bids a silent farewell to the farm he has devoted his life to as he prepares to move in with his grown daughter in Reykjavík. Receiving a decidedly chilly reception from his family, he is promptly whisked off to a retirement home, where he is unexpectedly reunited with an old flame, Stella (Sigrídur Hagalín), whose incessant, foul-mouthed tirades about how she refuses to die in “this garbage dump in the South” has made her a pariah to the staff. Hatching a plan to escape, the couple swipes a jeep and flees the city for their country home. A poignant, elegiac, and lightly magic-realist portrait of what (and who) was lost in Iceland’s drive towards modernization, Children of Nature remains the only Icelandic film ever nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar.

As in Heaven (Svo á jörðu sem á himni) – May 11 @ 3:15 pm w/ Kristín Jóhannesdóttir

Kristín Jóhannesdóttir equalled the visual and narrative daring of her first feature, Rainbow’s End, with this stunning magic-realist fable. The film’s protagonist, Hrefna (Álfrún Örnólfsdóttir), is a lonely young girl who shuttles back and forth between her small coastal village in 1936 and her 14^th-century fantasy world, which, as with Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, she populates with the familiar faces of her “real” life. As the modern-day Hrefna eagerly awaits a potential visit from the ship of the real-life French polar explorer and scientist Jean-Baptiste Charcot, her fantasy narrative unspools a tale of vengeance and sorcery that explains the origin of a curse that supposedly haunts the region to this day — and which Hrefna comes to fear foretells some disaster in the present. “A Nordic amalgam of Spirit of the Beehive and Venus Peter” (Time Out London), As in Heaven is also notable for offering a feminist critique of one of the central tropes of the Icelandic sagas: the (male) hero’s journey abroad, leaving wife and children to patiently await his return at home.

The Icelandic Dream (Íslenski draumurinn) – May 12 @ 7:15 w/ Róbert I. Douglas

A substantial domestic hit, Róbert I. Douglas’ scruffy mockumentary is a cutting satire of Icelandic machismo and the country’s peculiar entrepreneurial spirit. Toti (Thórhallur Sverrisson) is an indefatigable hustler whose latest get-rich-quick scheme involves selling “imported” (i.e., smuggled) Bulgarian cigarettes directly to stores and profiting on the mark-up; unfortunately, he knows nothing about the legalities of such transactions, resulting in him trudging from one shop to another and getting turned down by retailer after retailer. An unexpected (and uncharacteristic) stroke of luck suddenly brings him a windfall, but fate hasn’t finished with him yet. Making much comic hay from the grungy charm of its unlikeable but somehow sympathetic protagonist, The Icelandic Dream also offers a sardonic portrait of suburban Reykjavík, whose wasteland of strip malls and construction sites stands in stark contrast to the city’s famous hipster downtown.