This really was a perfectly MIFF film to start the 2025 festival. Pretty, quirky, occasionally obtuse, with long narratively disconnected shots and a bit of magical realism.

Directed by Hlynur Pálmason, who made Godland (2022), it promises a beautiful and bleak landscape with perhaps some artful Icelandic mythology. From the opening scenes, we settle in to the wind-swept sparseness and life of Anna (Saga Garðarsdóttir), an artist raising three children with an ex-husband Magnus (Sverrir Gudnason) who works on the fishing trawlers.

Anna is getting on with her life, trying to find space for her (rather fascinating) art, looking after their three children – twin boys played by Grímur and Þorgils Hlynsson who get all the funny lines, and a teen daughter who is the only reason this possibly sneaks past the Bechdel Test. Magnus is often away and when he is in port, he tries to be the parent and the partner but doesn’t quite seem to understand what his role is.

The cinematography is beautiful, the acting feels natural and almost like a documentary. Some of the most gorgeous scenes are watching Anna in her outdoor studio making art. You get a real sense of Icelandic life as being something intrinsically bound up with landscape and seasons. The children roam and create a statue as an archery target that weathers storms and ice and snow.

The moments of surrealism – more magic realism – are almost unnoticeable to start with and provide some moments of lightness and humour. By the end though, you realise that this is actually a story not about Anna, but about Magnus. About the paralysis of masculinity as women’s roles change. Magnus is waiting to find out what his identity is now that he is no longer within a family. His wife just gets on with it.

It’s definitely feels like a man’s view and perhaps it is supposed to be as bleak as it seems. We are given no insight into Magnus, although he increasingly takes up screen time with his dreams and hallucinations. The ethereal (and much repeated) shot up Anna’s dress perhaps says everything we need to know about him.