Time and Water

In Iceland, everything is larger than life. The landscapes, the natural elements, the passage of time. Writer Andri Snær Magnason grew up and spent his entire private and professional life here. But now he is experiencing something no one in his family thought he would ever experience: the death of a glacier. As the ice melts away and the climate fluctuates, everything is changing profoundly and irreversibly. The glacial chronicle Time and Water is permeated with reflections on a lost past and an uncertain future: it begins with the story of a glacier, and ends with a call to the responsibility we have towards each other, in past and present: to leave a better world for future generations. Magnason’s collaboration with director Sara Dosa, whose previous documentary hit Fire of Love traced the volcanological expedition of the Krafft couple, has resulted in a visually distinctive existentialist film about painful and profound changes in human lives and the existence of our planet. Using an abundance of archival footage and home movies that blend intimate memory and geological time, Dosa and Magnason adapt Magnason’s world-renowned literary hybrid (published in Croatian in 2021 under the title Of Time and Water, published by Planetopija). In doing so, they write a love letter to glaciers, the sea, the Earth and all life on it, with a call to action that if we want to prevent an immanent catastrophe, we need to start acting now. The book and film Of Time and Water merge art and science in an attempt to understand and confront the disturbing future that awaits us, approaching the urgent phenomenon of global warming in an emotional, psychological, poetic and mythological register. The message of Time and Water is ultimately somber – an elegy for Ok, the first of Iceland’s glaciers to be officially declared dead, is engraved on a metal plaque – but it also leaves room for urgent action. “We know what is happening and what needs to be done,” reads the plaque, which addresses potential future generations. “Only you will know if we have succeeded.” A poetic study of the unexpected changes in the Icelandic landscape due to global warming shows the stark reality of climate change, but also offers tangible, if fragile, hope for survival of a planet not ravaged by ecological destruction and loss of biodiversity.