The winner of nine Danish Academy Awards this year including Best Picture - Hlynur Pálmason’s feature debut follows the lives of Johan and his younger brother Emil, two miners whose routines, habits, and rituals are ruptured by a violent feud with a neighbouring family.
Shot in an eerie, near-apocalyptic industrial landscape, Winter Brothers examines the lives of brothers in a remote region. Younger brother Emil and his older, less excitable sibling Johan are dominated by the company and the constant, deafening hum of the machines they effectively serve. Emil's only consistent outlets, besides pining for the only woman in town, are watching an instructional video on how to properly shoot an antique rifle and the making, consuming, and selling of moonshine. That his latest batch may have made some of his fellow miners seriously ill only exacerbates his outsider status.
Hypnotic, strange and beautiful, Winter Brothers lures the audience in with its depiction of a life dictated by routine, only to then erupt with some of the most striking images captured on film this year. Pálmason's fierce aesthetic and fearless approach to the medium makes the film essential viewing.