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TIME AND WATER was not Sara Dosa’s first trip to Iceland. The filmmaker introduced us to the people who live there, and their conviction about the Hidden People, in her classic documentary, THE SEER AND THE UNSEEN. That film touched on the tension between preserving the natural world and violating it with development from the perspective of what those Hidden People, call them elves or trolls or what you will, thought about it (not much).
In TIME AND WATER, she filters the death of the Auk Glacier in 2014 through the family history of author Andri Snær Magnason, whose book On Time and Water inspired the film. Glaciers loom large in that family history and the way Dosa juxtaposes the inevitable change that nature imposes with the carelessness of ignoring climate change makes for a haunting, jarring, and poetic film tinged with melancholy and the profound joy of a community that stretches into the past and into the future.
When we spoke on April 22, 2026, my first question was about how we all missed the story of a glacier ceasing to exist, and why we lose more than ice when we lose a glacier.
We went on to talk about Magnason’s gift for tackling cosmic issues; how folklore helps us engage with the world; picking the(cinematically) best glacier sounds; and a shout-out to Dosa’s previous film, the Oscar-nominated FIRE OF LOVE.
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