Best Icelandic documentary movies

Ethereal post-rock pioneers Sigur Rós play a string of impromptu gigs in their native Iceland after finishing a world tour in 2006. As they travel through the country, the band visits a wide variety of venues, from a large outdoor festival to a coffee shop.

The pro-Palestinian, anti-capitalist, BDSM-provocative, techno-punk performance art ensemble Hatari unsurprisingly drew attention to themselves with their performance at the Icelandic qualifiers for the Eurovision Song Contest. So much so that they won and therefore were allowed to perform at the main event in Tel Aviv. But what now? Should they boycott the event, swallow their idealism, or use their airtime to criticise the host country for their illegal occupation of Palestine? The Icelandic director Anna Hildur joins the boys in the band all the way to the fateful final.

Following the career of Björk, this documentary looks at her early musical career with local icelandic bands, her acclaimed stint in The Sugarcubes, and her massive success as a free-spirited solo artist.

A two-part documentary about Daði & Gagnamagnið, introducing viewers to the band’s story since first taking part in the Icelandic national competition for Eurovision in 2017.

A film by Baldvin Z & Ólafur Arnalds Island Songs is a unique audio-visual portrait of my home country, Iceland. In 2016 I travelled to 7 towns across Iceland and collaborated with 7 local artists to create, record and perform a new composition. For 7 weeks we released a brand new song and live video every Monday. Alongside the performances we made this film, Island Songs, where we explore what makes these artists tick, the influence the country has had on their lives and try to show a different side of this island we all call home.

Part road movie, part musical, part serious inquiry into the caverns of the mind. Þriðji pólinn follows Anna Tara Edwards, an Icelander raised in Nepal, and legendary musician Högni Egilsson, as they journey to Anna’s childhood home in the mountain jungles to explore the afflictions and superpowers that come with bipolar disorder.

A Eurovision singer, Iceland's strongest woman, a male model, a plumber who wants to direct movies. They all work in the shopping mall that this documentary focuses on ... most of them want to get out, even just to the bigger mall down the road.

If the world has an edge, then it is almost certainly visible from Iceland. On the outermost cape, beyond which there is only the inhospitable Arctic Ocean, lies a farm belonging to Úlfar and his wife. This autumn will be the last time their grandchildren come from the city to drive the sheep back down from the hills. An almost tangible cinematic fabric that weaves a tale of an abandoned place where the mist clings to the steel-blue surface of the sea and where the occasional human visitor is sometimes welcome.

Margrét, a middle-aged office worker, wakes to see cows walking around downtown Reykjavík. When she arrives at her office, she realizes that she’s the only one who can see them. Chaos ensues when a cow appears in the cafeteria.

Ragnar Alexsson, a.k.a. RAX, is among the most celebrated photographers in the world. His series Faces of the North are a living document of the dying cultures of the far northern reaches of the planet. His photo essays of farmers and fishermen in Icleand, and of the great hunters of Greenland give an amazing insight into everyday life of people who struggle a daily battle with the Arctic nature. A celebration of the photographer and his subjects, Last Days of the Arctic is an elegy for a disappearing landscape and the people who inhabit it.

A documentary about the bustling Icelandic musical scene. This documentary covers some of Iceland's most talented and well-known musicians.

A few years ago when the developed world was booming the bankers and stockbrokers thought the gravy train would never end. Now we all know what came next. The same thing that always comes next - Banking collapse, false wars, and recession. No country epitomized this rise and fall better than Iceland. Amongst the chaos politics staggered on and an election of new leaders began. For the jaded people whose lives had been changed so drastically, something needed to be done. Against this backdrop the Idea of The Best Party was born. It started out as a joke inside the head of Iceland's most cynical and most controversial comedian Jon Gnarr. The Idea was to poke fun at the establishment that had failed so spectacularly. Parody the arrogance of the 'left' 'right' parties and their false morality, by showing how ridiculous they all were. By Election Day something incredible was about to happen.

The story of an Icelandic power lifter, Jón Páll Sigmarsson who was four times the World's Strongest Man.

When she died around 1050 AD, a littleknown Viking explorer had become the most traveled woman of the Middle Ages. She had sailed across the Atlantic Ocean eight times and her travels extended from Iceland to Greenland, North America, Scandinavia, the British Isles, through Europe, and all the way to the Vatican in Rome. She was rescued by Leif Erikson from the shipwreck that earned him the nickname Leif the Lucky. Her name was Gudrídur Thorbjarnardóttir, aka the Far Traveller.

An Icelandic documentary about the people that work, and hang around Hlemmur, the iconic Reykjavik bus stop. The film follows homeless people, people with disabilities, and a bus driver. A unique view in to their lives, and the view they have on the world. Soundtrack by Sigur Rós.

Icelandic politicians and businesses try to lure aluminum production to the island country.

This film tells the story of itinerant circus performers, cabaret acts and fairground attractions, showing rarities and never-before seen footage of fairgrounds, circus entertainment, freak shows, variety performances, music hall and seaside entertainment, chronicled from the 19th and 20th century. We will see early shows that wowed the world and home movies of some of the greatest circus families. Director Benedikt Erlingsson takes us back to the days when the most outlandish, skillful and breathtaking acts traveled the world. This rich visual archive has been created with exclusive access to The University of Sheffield’s National Fairground Archive and is accompanied by an epic new score by Georg Holm and Orri Páll Dýrason of Sigur Rós, in collaboration with Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson and Kjartan Dagur Holm.

Buffalo consists of a few handheld, almost still shots, that bring up questions concerning the border of reality and fiction, presence and past in memory reconstructed.

Håkan Juholt came from the reserve bench and became captain of the whole team. A high-stakes bet that hardly anyone had dared to bet on. But after only 303 days, Håkan Juholt's time as party leader for the Social Democrats was over.

It follows the band Of Monsters and Men as they commemorate the 10th anniversary of their groundbreaking debut album My Head Is An Animal.

Electronica Reykjavik traces the history of the electronic music scene in Iceland's capital from the early 90's until today. The Film deeply reflects a music genre that the general public knows little about but nearly everyone has participated in, one way or the other. The electronic music scene is on the edge, free from commercial values.

Tíu is a glorious journey through sight and sound into the world of the multi-platinum Icelandic band Of Monsters and Men, as they commemorate the 10th anniversary of their groundbreaking debut album My Head Is An Animal.

A lighthouse keeper prepares his earthly funeral while trying to reconnect with his inner elf. Hulda and Trausti have shared a roof on the Icelandic coast for over seventy years. Her love of books is matched by his love of stones. When he tells her he wants to change his name to Elf she warns him that the family will reject him. Now, as his one hundredth birthday nears and Trausti senses the hand of death upon him, he is searching for an elf’s coffin…

Rokk í Reykjavík (Rock in Reykjavik) gives a thorough overview of the powerful and expanding rock scene in Iceland. Most of the film consists of performances by a wide variety of rock-groups in various clubs in Reykjavik in 1981-82. There are also interviews with members of the groups representing different views on such features of the rock scene as sex, drugs and politics. 19 groups appear in the film.

Beautiful documentary by Osvaldur Knudsen about the eruption on Heimaey in the Vestmann Islands in 1973 (South of Iceland). The eruption destroyed some 30% of the town's houses and lasted for more than 5 months. Nice narration like in the old days and some nice sound(track) by Magnus Bl. Johannsson.

A short documentary showing the formation of an island from lava and other volcanic activity.

Experimental film of a trip around Iceland, filmed on the circular highway with a wide angle lens camera registering one frame every 12 seconds.

Icelandic performance art meets Spinal Tap in this wickedly fun look at women behaving creatively. Three bandmates, Álfrún, Saga and Hrefna, of The Post Performance Blues Band, are tired of playing to audiences of five at their gigs and getting paid in beer. Each of them is staring down 40 and exhausting themselves juggling motherhood and their artistic pursuits. They decide to give themselves one year to either become popstars or quit the band for good. What follows is a make-it-or-break-it story of a band that's not really a band, pursuing a goal that is not actually attainable. Band member and filmmaker Álfrún Örnólfsdóttir puts herself, along with age and gender bias, on stage in this docu-parable about talented but not teenaged women trying to be successful in a youth-obsessed, overnight-success industry. Band allows gifted artists to perform the resilience and sisterhood that truly exists between life's messes, rejections and triumphs.

On July 30, 1907, King Frederick VIII of Denmark came to Iceland. The picture shows the king's visits to Akureyri and Hrafnagil in northern Iceland on 17 August.

The film begins in the early hours of the morning of January 23rd 1973. A mile long fissure had ripped itself open on the outskirt of the fishing village on Heimaey, a small island of the Vestmannaeyjar group, off the South Coast of Iceland. Glowing ash and molten lava was spewed over the sleeping town. We see the evacuation of the 500 inhabitants, both by air and by sea. We witnes unbelievable scenes of bellowing craters, flowing lava, burning and collapsing buildings. We learn of the agony and uncertainty of people made homeless, and of the measures taken by the Civil Defence to deal with a disaster of an enormity rarely faced by so small a nation.

In July we fallow puffin catchers going on small boats to uninhabited rocky islands where they catch the flying birds into nets. This hunt is very dangerous as the men have to operate from narrow ledges in cliffs high above the surfing ocean. In August we see another side of the puffin/man relationship, as the children lovingly collect helpless puffin chicks from streets and alleys and keep them in cardboard boxes at their homes for the night until the can help them to the sea in the morning.

Hrafn Gunnlaugsson who put the Icelandic film industry on the world map in the seventies with films set in modern Iceland and the Viking age - here takes on the documentary form in a way only a feature film director could. Giving his imagination full scope, the director creates image of an alternative future - presents a diffrent view of the capital, Reykjavik, and questions accepted ideas about his country, Iceland.

Over the course of a year, we watch the bridge builder Haukur Karlsson and the musician Pál Pamphichler Pálsson at work, including the Eyjafjöll region on the south coast, Hvalfjörður and Skeiðarársandur, and Páll rehearsing the Reykjavík Brass Band for its anniversary concert, conducting the Icelandic Opera Orchestra in Der Fledermaus and having a work of his performed at a large open-air concert in Austria. The film suggests that all there certains themes common to all work, and that these men's occupations are not as different as they may seem to be at first glance.

Popp í Reykjavík (Pop in Reykjavik) is a film about the vibrant Icelandic music culture of the late '90s. It was released in 1998 and features interviews and concert footage of promising Icelandic bands like Gusgus, Bellatrix, Maus, Ensími, Quarashi, Botnleðja and Sigur Rós.

Varði goes to Europe is an independent sequel to Varði Goes on Tour. This time Varði heads to mainland Europe with his guitar to become a street artist.

An older couple, Sigga and Runni, reveal funeral photos of their long-dead son who died tragically young. After thirty years, the photos still elicit painful differences between a grieving mother and her stoic husband; Rúna a housewife living in the harsh and isolated west fjords keeps funeral photos of a terrible family tragedy. For Rúna, they mark a profound event which forever changed her and which belong side by side with photos of weddings, confirmations and baptisms; Erlendur and his stepdaughter Úlfhildur, after nursing his wife through a long battle with cancer, use photography to record her on her deathbed, in peace at last. And Sigrún, morbidly fascinated with funerals and wakes, compulsively videotapes acquaintances' family funerals as a bulwark against her own fear of death. When she experiences death first hand however, her attitudes change.

A documentary about the life of a "famous" bum in Iceland.

An experimental-documentary of the spirituality in Iceland, and the ultimate freedom it entails, as seen through the eyes of a foreigner. The filmmaker narrates his in-camera edited film. The sound design was recorded live, all in one take.

A collage-like film that mixes interviews with painter Erró and his collaborators, family and friends with visuals of his paintings and extracts from experimental films made in the sixties with Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, Carolee Scheemann, Christo, Matta and Adami. Also including many of the luminaries of twentieth century art, the film takes us from Paris and New York to the appropriately surrealistic landscapes of Erró's native Iceland.

This film is about the painter Sveinn Björnsson (1925-1997), and his struggles to perfect his art. Following a wide-ranging exhibition at the Kjarvalsstaðir Art Gallery in 1989, he has become tired of the fantasy style which he had been developing for thirty years. What needed to happen in order for him to create something new? What sacrifices would it involve? This film is about that struggle experienced by creative artists. The film is not a biography, or a learned review of the painter's style, but it does show a side of the man which very few see. One evening, he feels he is not alone in his studio; it feels as if some being is there who wants to help him.

What happens to an ordinary Icelandic family when the father of a new-born baby gets the opportunity to stay at home with the baby for three months? Will the relationship between father and wife better, and will the distribution of household chores be any different? And what has the employer and the colleagues at work to say about this arrangement? Those questions are among other that are asked in the documentary Fathers in paternity leave. We fallow one of the fathers through his paternity leave, talk to some others and interview, among others, a sociologist and a psychologist who are experts on the matter.

Discourse on Films is a documentary treating a new field of Icelandic culture, that is film history. Thorgeir Thorgeirson - a recipient of the honorary Edda (Award of The Icelandic Film Academy) "for his contribution to film production and general film culture in Iceland" comments on trends and tendencies of the local film industry, from the so called pioneers - as the first semi professional amateurs generously have been named - up to the more recent production of feature films. With professional skill and a clear dissident's mind Torgeirson is able not only to analyze Icelandic film history but also to sketch up a friendly-ironical picture of the “dress up society" in general.

In December 2021, Icelandic art star Ragnar Kjartansson opens a Russian oligarch’s museum by re-staging the American soap Santa Barbara live. Witness this jaw-dropping avant-garde critique of the Soviet empire play out on the eve of Putin’s brutal invasion of Ukraine.

A documentary on the inhabitants and unique natural environment of the Western Isles of Breidarfjördur bay, Iceland. Photographed in 1975-1980, the film mirrors in a one-year cycle the age-old ties between man and nature. The film asks why these islands, where there was once a flourishing community, are now practically deserted, a little known utopia where time stands still.

For centuries driftwood from the European mainland and all teh way from Siberia has washed up on the shores of Iceland. This film shows a driftwood expedition casting off at a fishing village on the east coast of Iceland, bound for the deserted Langanes headland in the far north-east. The film not only shows the collecting of driftwood, but also deals with the history of the settlement on the headland, narrated in part by the last farmer to leave.

An educational film about birdlife in Iceland, with a main emphasis on birds that nest in swampland.

All marketing is done through Coldwater Seafood Corporation, which is an affiliated company of the Icelandic Freezing Plants Corp. Coldwater also own and operate two fish plants in the USA, where they produce great varieties of processes sea-products. The film fallows fish from Iceland to the States, shows the marketing and distribution system and fallows the fish through quality control, processing and finally the distribution.

A documentary about Icelandic immigrants who moved to Brazil in the 19th century. Their path is traced and a visit paid to some of their descendants.

A news documentary about the "population growth" programme of former Rumanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, and the horrific consequences that followed.

A documentary about the man, Thorlákur helgi, who was worshipped as a saint in Iceland and in Europe in the middle ages.

A documentary programme about the contemporary Icelandic composer Atli Heimir Sveinsson.