The Cinematheque

Geriatric rebels-without-a-cause take a final stab at freedom in leading Icelandic auteur Fridrik Thór Fridriksson’s lyrical, affecting road movie, the work that put Iceland on the world cinema map: Children of Nature won an avalanche of international honours and remains the only Icelandic film ever nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. When elderly Thorgeir and Stella, sweethearts in their youth, rediscover each other in a Reykjavik retirement home, they decide to flee the facility together and head for the rugged northern territory of their childhoods. Fridrik, whose films mix satire, social realism, quirky humour, and minimalist cool in the manner of Kaurismäki or Jarmusch, renders the tale as a dreamy adventure set against magnificent, brooding landscapes of misty mountains and fjords. Swiss actor Bruno Ganz (who died in February) appears as an angel—a semi-reprise of his role in Wim Wenders’s Wings of Desire four years earlier.