Winter Brothers

Winter Brothers is the story about Emil and Johan, two brothers working together in a chalk mine in rural Denmark. The work is hard in the daytime, and the evenings are dull – and everything in the area is a cold, grey colour due to the dust from the mines. The younger brother, Emil, is seen as eccentric and strange by the other workers. He sells moonshine made from chemicals he steals from work, and besides his brother he doesn’t like to be around people too much. We follow Emil’s search for belonging and his yearning for love in a tough masculine environment with no room for fragility.

But Winter Brothers isn’t mainly a plot-driven film; it’s more in the bold stylistic choices that the nerve of the film originates. The inventive use of the natural surroundings makes the film really come to life, and leaves you with the sense of never having seen anything quite like this: Long takes of claustrophobic mine shafts and dusty winter scenery, absurd dream sequences, men fighting in the nude, combined with an intense soundscape where the mechanical noise from the mine and the surrounding nature is ever present. Icelandic director Hlynur Pálmason’s debut feature film is a fascinating and captivating piece, with a physical presence that will make audiences stumble out from the dark of the cinema when it’s done. Raw, jarring, and beautiful cinema.