‘Godland’ Director Says Keeping Production ‘Low-Key and Homemade’ Maintained a ‘Feeling of a Time and Place’

“Godland,” the third feature by 39-year-old Hlynur Pálmason, follows a Danish priest’s raggedy journey through Iceland in the late 1800s. He arms himself with church-building tools and something even more earthshaking: an early wet plate
photographic camera. 

“Godland” is Iceland’s submission for the Best International Feature Film at the 96th Academy Awards. The nation has been nominated just once, in 1991 for Fridrik Thor Fridriksson’s “Children of Nature.”

Pálmason’s movie starts with a title card, which explains that the story was inspired by a box of seven wet plate photographs that were recently discovered on the southeast coast of Iceland. These 130-year-old images are the first-ever photographs from that part of the world.