ECHO

 A mosaic of an Icelandic Christmas

Iceland, Christmas time. As everyone prepares for the holidays, a peculiar atmosphere falls upon the country revealing emotions of both excitement and concern. In the middle of the countryside, an abandoned farm is burning. In a school, a children’s choir is singing Christmas carols. In a slaughterhouse, chickens are parading along a rail. In a museum, a mother is arguing with her ex-husband on the phone. In a living room, a young girl is making her grandmother try on her new virtual reality headset… Through 56 scenes, Echo draws a portrait, both biting and tender, of modern society.

I was working on that film for a very long time; we were joking that I could end up filming it over more than a year. Then I stumbled upon the holiday season. It acts like a magnifier of our emotions, and even though you could say that Echo is some kind of arthouse Christmas film, the main goal was to come up with a contemporary take on Western society.

Rúnar Rúnarsson