The County

Stirring. This is a film about the clash of old and new, but there’s something else, too. Egilsdóttir’s excellent performance as Inga shows us a principled woman, rejuvenated by her battle against corruption: a woman who is thrilled, not just by the principled confrontation with these local bullies but the prospect of just being rid of everything.

Rousing. A quietly gripping study of moral courage. Beneath the superficial stillness – no one moves very fast in this windswept world – there’s a burning sense of injustice at work, and a lovely streak of bone-dry humour too.

Like ‘Rams’, The County blends elements of heartfelt tragedy with absurdist comedy, conjuring a humanist portrait of life in which community and loneliness coexist in a landscape of contradictions – geographical, personal, and political. Carrying the film shoulder high, Egilsdóttir does a terrific job of embodying Inga’s gradual change from stoically suffering farm owner to unstoppable force of nature, a change that catches everyone, friends and foe alike, by surprise. There’s an echo of Frances McDormand’s middle-aged antiheroine from ‘Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri’ in the rebellious figure Inga becomes, although anyone who enjoyed Benedikt Erlingsson’s 2018 Icelandic hit ‘Woman at War’ may see closer ties with that film’s eco-warrior. The drama may be down to earth, but that doesn’t stop the film – or indeed its protagonist – from dreaming big, and daring to look beyond the horizon.