The County

Inga works a dairy farm in the north of Iceland with her husband. When he dies the farm is left to her. Everything in the district is in the hands of a single co-operative: you buy your feed there, you sell your milk there, and going anywhere else is in practice impossible. Inga names that arrangement for what it is and stands up against it. The trouble is that all her neighbours are in debt to the same co-operative and nobody wants to stand beside her. It is Grímur Hákonarson's third feature; after Rams he returns again to the Icelandic countryside and again to livestock. Arndís Hrönn Egilsdóttir plays Inga and does not make the character an angry hero; the woman has simply stopped keeping quiet. The best thing about the film is that it does not declare the co-operative the villain: the institution genuinely keeps the farmers going, and that is exactly why nobody can oppose it. Ninety-two minutes.