Godland

In this spectacularly shot late-19th-century-set drama, an unwelcome priest is pushed to the limits of his faith and humanity.

Lucas, a young Lutheran priest from Denmark, travels to Iceland to oversee the building of a new parish in a remote coastal town. His interest in the landscape and its people – he carries cumbersome photographic material with him to record what he sees – wanes as the journey across the terrain becomes more and more treacherous. An antagonistic relationship with his tough Icelandic guide then challenges the arrogant priest’s increasingly deluded views, but it’s the beauty and terror of the natural world that cause the greatest spiritual disruption.

One of the most talked-about films from Cannes’ Un Certain Regard, this freely imagined historical account emerges from seven photographs taken by a Danish priest in the late 1800s of a remote coastal region of Iceland. A visual artist turned filmmaker, Hlynur Pálmason (A White, White Day) crafts extraordinary images with his regular cinematographer, Maria von Hausswolff, presented in Academy ratio with rounded corners that appear like old photos. Restrained and contemplative yet emotionally brutal, Godland arrives in the tradition of Martin Scorsese’s Silence and Paul Schrader’s First Reformed (MIFF 2018): an interrogation of religion, human relations and colonisation, set against a uniquely menacing landscape.

“A film of extraordinary craft and power … Striking for the economy and delicacy of its aesthetic.” – Sight and Sound