A film offering a unique cinematic insight on the country of its provenance, combining distinctive the notes of its auteur with homages to some of the finest films in history: to begin my text with a conclusion, this is the way one could describe Godland, the third feature by Icelandic filmmaker  Hylnur Pálmasson, which premiered in Un Certain Regard little more than a month ago. As I promised at the end of my review of Cannes, I’m coming back with a series of more ample thoughts on this film, which I believe was unfairly passed over by the jury at this year’s edition of the Riviera festival; thinking that, in the end, it will be vindicated by its lap through this year’s summer and fall time circuit. Truly a breath of fresh air, not just because we are at long last offered an Icelandic historical film set in another age than that of the Vikings, as Peter Debruge noted in Variety – but also because it contains in itself an almost perfect balance between narration, image, and montage, between the spiritual/metaphysical plane and the political one, offering ample possibilities for interpretation not due to largesse, but out of generosity, one that is foremost related to its main topic.

Flavia Dima

+ posts

Film critic & journalist. Collaborates with local and international outlets, programs a short film festival - BIEFF, does occasional moderating gigs and is working on a PhD thesis about home movies. At Films in Frame, she writes the monthly editorial - The State of Cinema and is the magazine's main festival reporter.

This author does not have any more posts.