WHALE VALLEY
2013 · 15m · Iceland, Denmark
Directed by Guðmundur Arnar Guðmundsson
Genres: coming-of-age, drama
Tones: contemplative, dark, melancholic
Two brothers living in a remote Icelandic fjord share an intensely close bond; when the younger brother witnesses something he cannot fully comprehend, it sets both of them on a path toward an irreversible rupture in their shared world.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
The landscape of the Icelandic fjord functions not merely as setting but as moral environment — Guðmundsson makes the remote and the beautiful co-complicit in the silence that surrounds his young protagonist.
Cannes Official Competition 2013, Special Mention, fifteen minutes. Two brothers in an Icelandic fjord, witnessed revelation that ruptures their world. Guðmundsson's restraint is the real thing — refusing to clarify what is seen leaves the moral weight properly suspended. Highest tier of short fiction.
Cannes Special Mention and 50+ international awards — placing the revelation entirely within a child's inchoate perception, refusing to clarify what's seen. That suspended moral weight is exactly what shorts can do that features can't.
Festivals
- Cannes Film Festival 2013, Short Film Special Distinction (ex aequo)
- Reykjavik International Film Festival 2013