Discover the best of Icelandic cinema, film, and television
Discover the definitive list of popular and critically-acclaimed movies and TV shows from Iceland. Find your next binge-watch, streaming on Netflix, HBO, Hulu, Prime Video, and other top services!
The cinema of Iceland
Icelandic cinema is a film culture where the landscape itself is the main star, a world of epic, otherworldly vistas and wonderfully strange, human stories. Its modern cinematic story truly took flight in 1992, when Friðrik Þór Friðriksson's touching road movie Children of Nature earned a surprise Oscar nomination, a phenomenal achievement that put the small nation firmly on the world's film map. In recent years, this creative energy has exploded. Director Baltasar Kormákur has become an international force, directing both Hollywood blockbusters and gritty Icelandic thrillers. The country's unique voice was perfectly captured in the international hit Rams (Hrútar), a darkly funny and heartbreaking tale of two estranged sheep-farming brothers that won major awards at Cannes. This cinematic mood has also created a global television phenomenon. The gripping crime series Trapped (Ófærð) became a sensation, brilliantly using the island's punishing weather as a central character, trapping its heroes and villains in a claustrophobic, snowbound town. What makes Icelandic cinema so unique is this incredible contrast: stories of small, intimate human drama, full of deadpan humour and a stoic spirit, playing out against the vast, elemental power of volcanoes, glaciers, and endless skies.
Best Icelandic series
Trapped 2015
The body of a murder victim turns up in a small Icelandic village just as a major snowstorm cuts the region off from the rest of the world.
77Katla 2021
A year after a subglacial volcano erupts, mysterious elements from prehistoric times emerge from the melting ice, bringing unforeseen consequences.
66The Valhalla Murders 2019
An Oslo detective with a painful past returns to his native Iceland to help a dedicated cop hunt a serial killer with a link to a mysterious photo.
70The Darkness 2024
Special investigator DI Hulda Hermannsdóttir tackles one last cold case before forced into early retirement. This one relates the mysterious and shocking murder of a young Russian asylum seeker a year prior.
62Stella Blómkvist 2017
Stella is a young, cute, libertine, tough, confident, intelligent, cunning Icelandic lawyer with a flexible moral compass who takes on mysterious and often dangerous cases and only loves rules when she's breaking them.
75Case 2015
A dramatic thriller about a broken lawyer who seeks redemption through his investigation into the suspicious suicide of a teenage ballet prodigy.
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Best Icelandic movies
Everest 2015
Inspired by the incredible events surrounding a treacherous attempt to reach the summit of the world's highest mountain, "Everest" documents the awe-inspiring journey of two different expeditions challenged beyond their limits by one of the fiercest snowstorms ever encountered by mankind. Their mettle tested by the harshest of elements found on the planet, the climbers will face nearly impossible obstacles as a lifelong obsession becomes a breathtaking struggle for survival.
71Z for Zachariah 2015
In the wake of a nuclear war, a young woman survives on her own, fearing she may actually be the proverbial last woman on earth, until she discovers the most astonishing sight of her life: another human being. A distraught scientist, he’s nearly been driven mad by radiation exposure and his desperate search for others. A fragile, imperative strand of trust connects them. But when a stranger enters the valley, their precarious bond begins to unravel.
61Lamb 2021
An Icelandic couple live with their herd of sheep on a beautiful but remote farm. When they discover a mysterious newborn on their land, they decide to keep it and raise it as their own. This unexpected development and the prospects of a new family brings them much joy before ultimately destroying them.
63Operation Napoleon 2023
A modern-day lawyer is sucked into an international conspiracy after being accused of a murder she didn't commit. Her only chance of freedom lies in uncovering the secret of an old German WWII aeroplane, long buried deep beneath the ice, before the CIA.
63Woman at War 2018
Halla declares a one-woman-war on the local aluminium industry. She is prepared to risk everything to protect the pristine Icelandic Highlands she loves… Until an orphan unexpectedly enters her life.
72Touch 2024
Soon after the break of the pandemic and realizing that his clock is ticking, Kristofer gets the urge to embark on a journey to try to find out what really happened when his Japanese girlfriend mysteriously vanished without a trace from London fifty years earlier.
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