09/04/2026 - Hlynur Pálmason conjures up just over an hour of playful visual magic in this companion film to The Love That Remains

Grímur Hlynsson (left) and Þorgils Hlynsson in Joan of Arc

Viewers are treated to the breadth of Iceland’s four seasons in the newest instalment in the filmography of Hlynur Pálmason (Godland), Joan of Arc, a work that transcends most of its written descriptions. The director actually started shooting Joan of Arc two years before he began with his Cannes-premiered The Love That Remains, building a small, weatherproof house – located right outside his home – in which to place his camera, allowing him to train the perfectly static lens on seasons of change and blustery weather. Joan of Arc is, however, anything but static, owing to the ways in which the director plays with the layers of colour, light and sound that permeate the Icelandic landscape.

The film originally world-premiered in San Sebastián's Zabaltegi-Tabakalera section last year, alongside an installation of Pálmason’s photographic and sculptural work, which is featured in The Love That Remains. Known as a companion film to this more well-known work, Joan of Arc enjoyed its Icelandic premiere at the Stockfish Film & Industry Festival in the presence of the director (who also wrote the screenplay and served as the cinematographer), who then engaged in a lively Q&A afterwards.

Joan of Arc begins with moments of play and play-fighting between his two sons, Grímur Hlynsson and Þorgils Hlynsson, followed eventually by his daughter, Ída Mekkín Hlynsdóttir, joining in the fun. Their activity is abstracted from any outside context, even though the film is linear; the viewer follows the progress made in forging the sculpture – which they name after the titular figure – all the way through to its destruction. The movie’s slight repetition in showing people shooting arrows at the completed Joan of Arc grows increasingly humorous (Icelandic audiences at the premiere laughed and laughed as if the film were a full-on comedy, clearly attuned to further dialogue nuances), but the comedy is never imposed for the sake of variety.

A soaring synthesiser cover of Claude Debussy’s classic piano work “Clair de Lune” becomes the film’s musical centrepiece from the very start, immediately transfixing us on the ethereality – but not sentimentality – of the setting, which is juxtaposed with the seeming mundanity of the kids’ play. Pálmason uses the camera to section the frame into a natural set of horizontal thirds – foreground, middle ground and background – which he’s able to “manipulate” using environmental elements to create immensely dynamic settings. With drifting fog that obscures the mountains, perturbations in sound, shifts in light and changing precipitation, the Icelandic filmmaker shuffles through the seasons like he’s rifling through a deck of playing cards, creating a set of completely unique images.

When birds enter the frame, they begin to alter the viewing experience further – as other living beings crossing the shot – and when the children move from the grassy foreground onto the frozen ice, it is as if they are breaking an unspoken barrier, throwing the audience out of a reverie. These minute changes come as such a surprise that they completely transform the way we view the picture. Here, Pálmason demonstrates an inventive mastery of editing and blocking, such that the camera need not even move at all – and yet, it emerges as one of the most thoughtfully lensed works of the last year.

Joan of Arc is a production by Still Vivid (Iceland) and Snowglobe (Denmark), co-produced by Maneki Films (France). New Europe Film Sales holds the rights to its world sales.