Godland

At the end of the nineteenth century a young Danish priest is sent to build a church in Iceland. Rather than sailing directly he chooses to land in the south and walk overland, intending to photograph the journey. It takes months. He and his Icelandic guide Ragnar share neither a language nor any respect. The subject is not the mission but a man defeated by his own project. The priest drives men and horses to carry his camera and its wooden cases; what he loses on the road, before the church is ever built, is what the film is about. The form imitates an old photographic format: a square frame, rounded corners, natural light. The landscape is not made beautiful; it is cold, wet and hostile. The premise is invented. Hlynur Pálmason has said the film is built on the idea of seven old photographic plates found in Iceland; those plates do not exist and the film was written on top of that fabricated discovery. The narrative runs in both Danish and Icelandic, and the distance between the two languages carries all of its tension. It screened in Un Certain Regard at Cannes in 2022. Elliott Crosset Hove plays the priest and Ingvar E. Sigurðsson plays Ragnar. Who it is for: viewers who like slow Nordic cinema built on landscape. Who it is not for: anyone waiting for incident; the film runs over two hours and has almost no plot.