Best Icelandic drama movies
Get ready to binge. We've found a collection of must-watch drama films from Iceland, now streaming on Netflix, HBO, Hulu, Prime Video, and other top services!
Z for Zachariah (2015)
Z 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.
Metalhead (2013)
Metalhead (2013)
A young girl in 1990s Iceland is caught between the life that took her brother and her own inability to strike out on her own. In her grief, she finds solace in metal and dreams of making her own music.
Lamb (2021)
Lamb (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.
CUBS (2016)
CUBS (2016)
A single father wants to fulfil his young daughter's wish to throw a slumber party for her friends, but it turns out to be more of a challenge than he thought due to the rules of modern society.
Last and First Men (2020)
Last and First Men (2020)
As the end approaches inexorably, the last humans, living millions of years into the future, send a message to the humanity of the present that is both a plea for help and a warning, but also an epic tale of evolution, decline and hope.
Touch (2024)
Touch (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.
The Juniper Tree (1990)
The Juniper Tree (1990)
Margit and her older sister Katla flee for safety after their mother is burned to death for witchcraft. Finding shelter with Johan and his resentful young son, Jonas, the sisters help form an impromptu family unit that’s soon strained by Katla’s burgeoning sorcery.
I Remember You (2017)
I Remember You (2017)
After an older lady hangs herself in a church, a new psychiatrist discovers she was obsessed with the disappearance of his eight-year-old son, who vanished three years earlier. Meanwhile, three city dwellers are restoring a house when they realize it is haunted.
One Point O (2004)
One Point O (2004)
Paranoid computer programmer Simon wakes up to find a package in his room one day. Despite attempts at securing his apartment, the packages keep arriving. While cameras watch Simon's every move, he struggles to find the answers to the mysterious forces taking over his life.
Rift (2017)
Rift (2017)
Months after they broke up, Gunnar receives a strange phone call from his ex-boyfriend, Einar. He sounds distraught, like he's about to do something terrible to himself. Gunnar drives up to the secluded cabin where Einar is holed up and soon discovers that there's more going on than he imagined. As the two men come to terms with their broken relationship, some other person seems to be lurking outside the cabin, wanting to get in.
As in Heaven (1992)
As in Heaven (1992)
Set on a remote farm on the west coast of Iceland in late summer 1936. Hrefna, encouraged by her grandmother’s stories, begins to mix past and future in her imagination, travelling back to the 14th century.
Heartless (2020)
Heartless (2020)
Young couple Anna and Gunnar live in a society where people are assigned a new spouse in a lottery every seven years. Full of heartache, the couple faces their biggest fear in the face of life with a new partner.
Two Birds (2008)
Two Birds (2008)
The story takes place during one bright summer night and follows a group of young teenagers on a journey from innocence to adulthood. The main character is a timid boy who has a typical schoolboy crush on a girl his age, who happens to be a friend of his mate.
Quake (2021)
Quake (2021)
Saga gets hit by a fierce epileptic attack walking in a public park with her six-year-old son resulting in a total memory loss. Afraid of being considered unable to take care of her son, Saga attempts to hide her state from others and occupies herself digging for the answers she needs from within. As she struggles to gather bits and pieces from her forgotten life, repressed memories that Saga unconsciously blocked as a child suddenly start to come back, revealing a painful truth about herself and her past.
Wrestling (2007)
Wrestling (2007)
A love story about two gay wrestlers living in rural Iceland who must keep their relationship a secret from the inner world of Iceland's national and very macho sport.
Him (2019)
Him (2019)
Andri, an anxious teenage boy, hides and represses his sexuality in fear of his masculine father's reaction but, on the eve of Andri's first date, he finds a clever way to reveal his secret.
Ástarsaga (2012)
Ástarsaga (2012)
A story of love, madness, and 24-hour daylight. Solange's boyfriend Baldur mysteriously takes off for Iceland. She follows, but an even deeper mystery awaits her.
I (2018)
I (2018)
A young trans person travels to the city in search of the freedom to be themselves
Children of Nature (1991)
Children of Nature (1991)
An elderly couple leave their retirement home to make one last journey back to their home in the Western Fjords.
No Country for the Young Ones (2012)
No Country for the Young Ones (2012)
Strýta is a story of two twelve year old boys, who live in a small town in the east of Iceland. Just outside of town is an abandon house and rumor has it, there is a gun there. The boys, having nothing better to do, decide to steal a car and take a journey to the abandon house to find the gun.
A Little Trip to Heaven (2005)
A Little Trip to Heaven (2005)
Insurance investigator Abraham Holt travels to a tiny town in rural Minnesota to look into a particularly unusual insurance claim stemming from a horrific car accident. As Holt examines the scene of the wreck, it all seems a bit too perfect. And when he interviews Isold Mcbride and her shifty husband, Fred -- the impoverished beneficiaries of the massive, recently initiated life-insurance policy -- he begins to suspect that something is amiss.
Home (2013)
Home (2013)
Four outsiders of three generations band together in a sweet and funny paean to non-conformism. After her husband's death, elderly Frida comes to know her introverted, friendless adult granddaughter, Lou, from whom she had long been kept apart by Frida's estranged daughter. Frida invites another misfit into her household: 10-year-old Tom, who welcomes the chance to spend time away from both his home and his bullying classmates. Meanwhile, Lou reluctantly gets drawn into a friendship with secondhand bookseller Henrik. A dry comedy of great charm and warmth.
In the Arm of the Sea (2001)
In the Arm of the Sea (2001)
The story revolves around the seacaptain Valdimar who marries Unnur, but on the night of their wedding strange things start to happen which leads them out to sea.
Hullabaloo (2010)
Hullabaloo (2010)
The time is 20 years and a few months to the millennium, and the unrecognized, self-proclaimed genius Orm Odins has to deal with the age-old existentialist dilemma that is teenage hood. With his final exams looming, his hormones in overdrive and love just around the corner what can a great poet do to survive? Our setting is Reykjavik in the eighties, a city that is going through a growth spur not unlike our eloquent hero. The mullet is just about to put its mark on a unsuspecting generation, there is no TV on Thursdays, only one radio station, beer is still and outlawed commodity and somewhere within the city limits the first female president in the world will see has a dream.
A White, White Day (2019)
A White, White Day (2019)
In a remote Icelandic town, an off duty police chief begins to suspect a local man to have had an affair with his wife, who has recently died in a car accident. Gradually his obsession for finding out the truth accumulates and inevitably begins to endanger himself and his loved ones. A story of grief, revenge and unconditional love.
The Girl Gogo (1962)
The Girl Gogo (1962)
Ragnar has left his family farm and works as a taxi driver in Reykjavík in the early sixties. He's drawn to the beautiful but unhappy girl Gogo and hopes to build a better life with her. But she's a lost soul and their brief romance results in tragedy.
The Deep (2012)
The Deep (2012)
Based on an astonishing true incident that took place on the frigid seas off Iceland in 1984, The Deep fashions a modern-day everyman myth about the sole survivor of a shipwreck, whose superhuman will to survive made him both an inexplicable scientific phenomenon and a genuine national hero.
The Sky Palace (1994)
The Sky Palace (1994)
Emily is a young boy that dreams about owning a dog and he starts working so he can save up to buy one. Meanwhile his family are dealing with money problems.
The House (1983)
The House (1983)
A young couple moves into an old house. She teaches deaf children, he is a musician, working on his own compositions. Their separate worlds, one silent, the other full of sounds, create a vivid pattern of contrasts, which affect their emotional lives and their living together. From the time they move into the house, they are strangely aware of something odd, especially she, while he concentrates more and more upon his work. A series of incidents adds to her growing uneasiness about the house. Its past seems to creep in on her. She feels as if some tragedy must have befallen the people that lived there before, but when she starts asking around she gets few answers. There is something about the house that seems to be on the verge of overpowering her - something that in an unexpected way is related to her origins and permanently affects her life and destiny.