Making a film about the climate crisis is a daunting task. How does a filmmaker meet the urgency, enormity and impending doom of this crucial moment in time? Oscar-nominated “Fire of Love” director Sara Dosa goes back to basics: family, love, home. The documentarian partners with Icelandic poet and author Andri Snær Magnason to craft a portrait of the melting glaciers of his homeland. Far from being an ecological investigation, “Time and Water” is a moving story about what the Icelandic terrain has meant and still means to Magnason’s family. In telling this one family’s story and examining their connection to the land they were born into, Dosa makes an affecting documentary about a looming danger that many are ignoring.
Inspired by Magnason’s book “On Time and Water,” the film unfolds like a long letter written by the author to someone close to him, perhaps one of his children. He narrates the story of the melting glaciers, what they meant to the land, to him and his ancestors before him. “Time and Water” starts with the history of the terrain, how the glaciers came to be formed and became important to Iceland, and also tells the contemporary tale of how the climate crisis is leading to their extinction. Yet quickly it becomes something deeper: a love story. The glaciers are where his explorer grandparents, Arni and Hulda, met, fell in love and started this family.
