Herzogian Drama in Icelandic Wilderness that Wowed Cannes
It’s the late 19th century, and a young Danish priest is traveling to a remote part of Iceland to build a church and photograph its people — yet the deeper he journeys into the unforgiving landscape, the more he strays from his purpose, his mission, and morality.
“Godland” is written and directed by Hlynur Pálmason, the filmmaker behind “A White, White Day” and “Winter Brothers.” Janus Films IndieWire shares the trailer for the highly acclaimed Icelandic feature, which will be available in New York on February 3 and Los Angeles on February 10.
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“Godland” stars Elliott Crosset Hove, Ingvar Sigurðsson, Vic Carmen Sonne, Jacob Hauberg Lohmann, Ída Mekkín Hlynsdóttir, Waage Sandø, and Hilmar Guðjónsson. Crosset Hove stars as Lucas, a Lutheran priest sent from Denmark to Iceland to watch over the establishment of a new parish church, but his faith is challenged by the harshness of life in rural Iceland, including the fact that, as a monolingual Danish-language speaker, he can’t communicate with his Icelandic guide (Ingvar Eggert Sigurðsson).
Continue reading about the film from Variety’s review: “In ‘Godland,’ Icelandic writer-director Hlynur Pálmason attempts to see his homeland through outside eyes, the way it must have looked to the Danes who claimed and controlled it until World War II. Icelandic period pieces are often set much earlier, à la ‘The Northman,’ but this one — at once visually striking and emotionally austere, in its almost Bressonian restraint — takes the country’s colonialist past as its subject, pitting a late-19th-century man of faith against a force far stronger than him, like some kind of Arctic, art-house ‘There Will Be Blood.’”
“Godland” was nominated for the Un Certain Regard Award at Cannes 2022. Elliott Crosset Hove was nominated at the European Film Awards for Best European Actor. The film received widespread acclaim from festivals across the globe, including San Sebastian, London and Munich.
Watch the exclusive trailer for “Godland” below.
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