In 2021, I travelled to Iceland to visit my now-husband, who was working with a high-profile band on their upcoming album. We stayed primarily in Reykjavík, except for a multi-day road trip through the Golden Circle and the more remote parts of the country. I was standing on a cliff near the Gullfoss Waterfall when I concluded that to truly understand the beauty of nature, one must spend time in Iceland. Never before have all of my senses lit up at once: the breathtaking panoramic sights of waterfalls, the crisp chill in the air while riding Icelandic horses, and the one-of-a-kind scents from a local, family-run perfumery (shoutout to Fischersund) all told a unique story about a small, yet persevering country. My theory is substantiated by Sara Dosa’s latest documentary, Time and Water, which captures the fragility of Iceland’s environment amidst generational legacy.

The Land of Fire and Diminishing Ice

Water is one of our most precious natural commodities, and yet, due to climate change, there is no guarantee that it will remain a viable lifesource. This devastating reality is already taking shape in Iceland, where glaciers are “dying” and running out of water. Andri Snær Magnason, a profound poet and author, captures this emotional moment in time in a very personal way by relating it to lineage and his own family tree. Melting ice not only disrupts the ecosystem but also throws the whole country into an identity crisis. What is Iceland without ice? In that same vein, what is his familial legacy once his elders pass away?

To make sense of this existential question, Andri picks up a camera and creates a cinematic time capsule about this all-encompassing shift from life to death. Throughout the film, Andri’s lens alternates between home video archives and close-up visuals of glaciers and other water resources. As the film’s protagonist and narrator, Andri’s sensitive nature and adept intuition make for a compelling watch.

The Hard Goodbye

Time and Water is more than just an environmentally conscious film about the country’s ecological future, although that is the underlying urgent messaging. Academy Award-nominated director Sara Dosa uses Andri’s perspective to draw correlations to the notion of time, another priceless resource that slowly slips away every day. Using archival footage, including his grandparents’ photographs and films, and Icelandic folklore, Andri reflects on what it means to say goodbye to the things he never thought he could lose. His realizations are universally profound and incredibly powerful.

Director’s Statement

“I make films about how humans seek meaning with the more‑than‑human natural world — often through explorations of allegory, metaphor, and myth. Central to this work is an inquiry into time: cultural temporalities, geologic scales, and seasonal rhythms that entangle human lives within the living systems around us, revealing our shared ecological kinships…

While themes of solastalgia (the emotional distress produced by environmental change) and grief run through the film, we intend it to land on a note of agentive uncertainty. The future is unwritten, and what we do now matters. Too much hope can lull us into complacency, while too much dread can convince us the future is already lost. Uncertainty, however, invites agency. It reminds us that our actions in this unstable present shape the world our loved ones will inherit.” -Sara Dosa, director

Takeaway

Time and Water is a poetically haunting yet earnest observation of the human experience and the fragility of nature. In 200 years, will the name “Iceland”, with its once-abundant natural aquatic resources, reference a ghost of the past, only existing in the memories of previous generations? Only time will tell.