Sparrows

Ari is sixteen and living with his mother in Reykjavík when she has to take a job abroad, and he is sent to the north-western town where he spent his childhood, to his father. There he finds his old friend grown into a young woman, while his father is struggling with drink and with what little work a hollowed-out town still offers. Ari starts at the fish plant and tries to settle into a life that is not his. The film opens like a coming-of-age story, but a scene of sexual violence at its centre changes the tone of everything around it; afterwards the narrative neither judges nor covers over what happened, staying with the boy who has to carry it. Rúnar Rúnarsson shoots the untouristed Icelandic winter, the empty harbour and the closed-in sky. It took the top prize at San Sebastián in 2015.