As published on social media on the 5th of November:
Half Elf, the award-winning Icelandic documentary about a lighthouse keeper who prepares his earthly funeral while trying to reconnect the elf within, is now available on Netflix.
On the shores of Iceland, a lighthouse keeper prepares his 100th birthday while his wife retreats into a world of forgotten poetry. When he bursts out singing, she begs him to stop screaming. When he tells her he wants to change his name to “Elf” she warns his family will abandon him.
Starting out as a school project in his MA studies in Visual Anthropology, director Jón Bjarki Magnússon followed his grandparents, Trausti Breiðfjörð Magnússon and Hulda Jónsdóttir, with the camera as they went about their final days, creating a piece of work which critics have described as an “unpretentious”, “masterpiece”, “of cinematic genius” and “an experience of unfettered joy” that comes “with a lightness of being that offers inspiration to us all.”
A nominee for ‘the Best New Nordic Voice’ at Nordisk Panorama 2020 and ‘the Best Documentary’ at The Icelandic Film & Television Academy ‘Edda Award’ 2021, Half Elf received rave reviews following its premiere, entering competitions at various European film festivals and winning several prizes, including ‘the Manfred Krüger Awards’ for excellent camera work at the 16th biannual German International Ethnographic Film Festival 2022 as well as ‘The Grand jury Prize’ at Skjaldborg, the Icelandic Documentary Film Festival 2020.
Half Elf is produced by Jón Bjarki Magnússon and Hlín Ólafsdóttir for Icelandic production company, SKAK bíófilm ehf., in collaboration with Andy Lawrence at AllRitesReversed in the U.K. and Veronika Janatková at Pandistan in Czechia. International sales and distribution is in the hands of Feelsales in Spain.
Watch Half Elf on Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/title/81506594