Continuing our series of writers highlighting lesser-known films available to stream is a recommendation for a humane and thoughtful Icelandic drama
What happens when one person’s day at work is another’s catastrophe? For the likes of border control officers who enforce the sharpest ends of government policy, signing a document or stamping a passport can take seconds, but can have a life-changing impact on people they may never see again. Unless, perhaps, they live on the Reykjanes peninsula in Iceland with just 28,000 others.
And Breathe Normally, Ísold Uggadóttir’s little-seen but stunning debut feature film from 2018, holds a magnifying glass to one particular encounter in Keflavik airport, and asks what might happen if two people, each in their own form of peril, could reach across that invisible line to help one another. For fans of Ken Loach and Andrew Haigh, it is an immensely moving piece of storytelling, focused on the human cost of the cold, unfeeling systems designed to control
immigration in the western world.