Time And Water

“The future we were worried about is here”

Sara Dosa’s arresting documentary ‘Time and Water’ tells the harrowing story about Iceland Glaciers and the impact climate change is having on Iceland's environment. This is interwoven by a love story truly at its heart. Andri Snær Magnason is the focal point with his home videos, photographs and stories correlating with the environmental disasters happening in his hometown.

A beautiful tragedy is how to begin describing this documentary as we learn the story of the Glaciers and Andri’s family's connections .Andri’s grandparents Jón and Hulda who were among a group of people who first started exploring glaciers. They met on the ice, fell in love and honeymooned there. It seems their whole world revolved around time and ice. With powerful generational stories dating back to 1922 being told in their very own words. It’s such a personal and intimate glance through at this family's life and you almost feel like you're sitting around their kitchen table listening to all these stories.

Sara Dosa was previously nominated for an Oscar for her powerful documentary ‘Fire Of Love’ which portrayed vulcanologists Katina and Maurice Krafft. Following that same path with yet another compelling message. Focusing on the realistic horizon we all face in the future. Asking the question about what the world will be like in 2104? will they know how much we fought to keep our environments?. Will they understand that we simply didn’t give up? and what life was like before when the future was so far away.

Andri as our narrator throughout really tries to avoid all the doom and gloom, trying to look at this not positively but with hope. That eventually we will start going down the right path forwards. With ice seeming to be a metaphor for holding onto memories. Andri was a poet who also was an employee for the national archives in Iceland. Which we keep returning to for folktales, old rhymes and with accounts of residents dating back to the 14th century.

This documentary is large with aerial shots and wide looks onto glaciers, sea and ice simply fading right in front of your eyes. My personal criticism is that it felt long towards the end. I felt like a lot could have been edited down. With beautiful landscapes to look at with just the sound of cracking ice and crashing waves. Without our narrator at times it felt as though they went on too long, with it holding such an important message. That we know what needs to be done to stop this such as carbon emissions, but we don't do enough about it. Viewers may feel we keep going back to the same places and with montage footage in depth at the family's life. Such as kids being kids and random cuts always seemed so sudden and far from what we were just learning about.

Time and Water is a captivating documentary that spreads a lot of awareness to its subject matter, learning about Icelandic history, generational tales and how the future is only around the corner.

TIME AND WATER IS IN UK CINEMAS FROM 12 JUNE 2026.