The Cinematheque

Nói (Tomas Le Marquis), a teenaged loner living with his grandmother in a small fishing village in Iceland’s West Fjords, is perpetually at odds with his teachers, his principal, and his whole sleepy town, but things start looking up when he meets new-girl-in-town Íris (Elín Hansdóttir), who works at the local gas station. Fusing a quirky, deadpan sense of humour with the almost surreal atmosphere of its eerily still, isolated setting, Dagur Kári’s first feature survived negative feedback in previews to make a wildly successful debut at Rotterdam; it subsequently played more than seventy festivals worldwide, picking up numerous awards along the way. Not only one of the best modern Icelandic films, Nói albinói is also one of the key world-cinema titles of the 2000s, and helped pave the way for the warm international receptions given to Kári’s compatriots Grímur Hákonarson (Rams), Benedikt Erlingsson (Woman at War), and others.