Birna Gunnarsdóttir

John and Reverend John

He is accused of a good deal; collecting all kinds of rubbish around the refectory farm, allowing the place to deteriorate and general incompetence as a farmer. In addition, he is said not being able to control his temper, to have isolated himself from his flock and because of his oddness and idiosyncrasies his sanity has also been questioned. Is Reverend Jón an incompetent priest? If so, why isn’t he allowed to stay at his farm? Is it because he underfeeds his sheep? Or is it because members of the congregation want to get their hands on his eider down farm for themselves? Or is it simply his appearance, contradicting the accepted notions of what a pastor should be, that has triggered the hostilities towards him.

In Exile Thinking of Home

The scholar Sveinn Bergsveinsson, a Communist in the 1930s, was trapped in Berlin by the outbreak of World War II and forced to work for the Nazi propaganda machine. Returning to Iceland, sick with tuberculosis, he found himself branded by both sides of the cold war political divide and barred from academic work. In desperation, he emigrated to East-Germany where he became a respected professor. He always hoped to return home but died in East-Berlin in 1988, a year before the wall came down. He left behind a wealth of documents, photographs, film and voice recordings which form the basis of this narrative.

Crossroads

Within the walls of the hospital, the duo develops a strong visceral relationship that eventually takes them to an unknown emotional territory bouncing them between supposed fantasy and the vicious reality of life.