Popular reviews

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  Review by HamisH ★★★★

  Everyone has a story...

  Echo is an interesting film. It’s made up from 56 shots and 56 stories, all around a minute long with no connection between one another. It’s a quiet and patient Frankenstein’s monster of a voyage in to Icelandic life over the Christmas holidays and I doubt it’ll be for everyone. Personally the style of storytelling left me with a lot of power on what I wanted to interpret the meaning of the film as, what I wanted the message to be, which I really liked. For me it was a reminder that everyone around you has their own life outside of you, it may be good, it may be bad. The people around you are main characters of their own story. So, for them, why not try and be the best side character you can. And of course, for yourself, try and be the best main character you can.

  Around the World (🇮🇸)

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  Review by Puffin ★★★★ 3

  Each scene is like the thesis to a larger film, 56 little stories in total, with an average of just over a minute per scene. And if I recall correctly, each scene is told with a single shot, and every edit acts as a transition from one story to the next. Small connections are made occasionally by events like radio or television broadcasts, but the broader point of connection is that each scene takes place in Iceland around the holidays. And while some scenes are smaller gestures or more decidedly minor sequences, they all feel significant enough to warrant an inclusion.

  The rhythm of differing experiences, positive or negative or neutral, add up to a pretty all-encompassing example of the…

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  Review by Conchobarre ★★★★

  A beautiful meditation on the Icelandic place, people and society through a series of vignettes which are subtly linked. It's through the prism of the Christmas holiday season. I wish every country could get one of these. The setting up of all the scenes must have been an enormous amount of work, it's quite incredible because every shot is exquisite.

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  Review by Wyatt Winborne ★★★★★ 2

  Watched in multiple sittings and this movie STILL fucked me up. Possibly my second favorite of 2019 (or is this technically a 2020 film?). Cinematography on another level. Patience, thoughtfulness, compassion. This is transcendent filmmaking with the lightest touch, the least manipulation. It's so unbelievably powerful. Will watch again very very soon. If you haven't seen it, do yourself a favor and WATCH IT IMMEDIATELY.

  Also, MUBI is quickly becoming my favorite streaming platform.

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  Review by col_plimp ★★★½

  Einsam, mit Verwandten oder Idioten, herzlich, traurig, betrunken, enttäuscht, stressig...
  Irgendwie sogartig wird mit wirklich vielen (~50) kurzen Ausschnitten aus dem winterlichen Island, die Menschen jeden Alters und aus allen Bereichen und Schichten zeigen, eine unkonventionelle Weihnachtszeit "gefeiert"; wobei Island hier nur stellvertretend für unser globalisiertes und zeitgenössisches Europa steht.
  Mit seinem puzzleartigen Format ist Echo etwas für die düsteren Tage zum Ende des Jahres, was vermutlich jeden irgendwann einmal packt - politisch und gesellschaftlich top-aktuell, schmerzhaft-authentisch, richtig melancholisch und total menschlich.

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  Review by Julps2 ★★★★ 1

  Echo is a film made of 56 vignettes, each one shot which last around a minute, that relate daily life in Iceland around Christmas and New Years Day. Its sense of humanity mixed with the country's beautiful scenery makes it the ultimate comfort movie.

  I'd normally say wait for a snowy day during the holidays to watch it with a cup of hot cocoa but given all we've experienced in the last few months, you deserve it right now!

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  Review by RasmusS ★★★½

  Cinema that on the surface is simply there to convey an emotion of the moment, to remind us of the joys and hardships we all face but also to make sense of those feelings on a broader scale by connecting random people together and therefore becoming an admirable effort to make sense of the whole damn world around us.

  2020 ranked

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  Review by Hutch ★★★★ 4

  Rúnar Rúnarsson’s Film is an imaginative and immaculately composed series of tableaux that combine to moving and satisfying effect. There are 56 short scenes, all shot with a fixed camera aimed at a moment in the life of a cross-section of modern Icelanders going about their business over the Christmas season. 

  The scenes progress not as a story, but with a loose connective tissue - from a scene of men walking across the snow, to a mum tenderly cradling her infant wondering if birds feel the cold, to an undertaker talking on the phone to his child while sitting in front of a dead boy in an open casket, to a man in a solarium speaking on the phone to…

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  Review by Samcrom ★★★★½ 2

  So you know when a film has a closing shot that conveys more than itself, that leaves you breathless from its swift power and reeling from its uncompromising stamp of finality? Yeah… so this is 56 of those.

  Each shot is a fleeting glimpse of a story. A coiled wire of tension; a building of dread for that inevitable cut. The cut is the end, the death of that vignette, the last you will *ever* see or hear of these characters. Final, jarring, jolting, freeing, revealing—

  Each image is a floating snowflake in a hushed night. A wistful whirlwind. “No, don’t leave yet…” I whisper to each of the characters before they’re gone, imploring them to tell me more of…

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  Review by William Stottor ★★★½

  A beautiful film on so many levels.

  The ordering of the various vignettes was very impressive. A mother holding a baby is followed by a young child lying in a casket at his funeral. We see a barn full of goats packed together and then immediately after a gym full of people packed together.

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  Review by Thorsteinn ★★★★½

  Ég er búinn að bíða svo lengi eftir þessari mynd. Ekki bókstaflega þessari mynd, en svona mynd.
  Mynd sem fangar augnablik, frekar en heila sögu. Mynd sem nær að spegla raunveruleikann svona nákvæmlega.
  Þetta er eitthvað sem ég hallast oft að í minni eigin kvikmyndagerð. Ekkert set-up eða resolution, bara tilfinning.
  Ég er smá hissa að rúnar gerði þessa mynd þar sem að hún er ansi öðruvísi en hans fyrri myndir. Það kemur mér samt ekkert á óvart að hún kemur svona vel út, af því að rúnar er besti stuttmyndagerðarmaður íslands.
  Sögurnar eru svo mismunandi, en passa samt allar saman. Leikararnir standa sig frábærlega, og margar sögurnar eru mjög áhrifamiklar.
  Meira svona bíó.

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  Review by Elena Lazic ½

  A glib, reactionary, painfully unimaginative patchwork of scenes showing Icelandic people around Christmas time where the director, instead of taking the time to show the value and humanity in those different, equally valid lifestyles, only gives them each a brief and mocking glance (young people with phones being his favourite target. In 2019!). Adding insult to injury is the fact that most of these scenes are staged for the film, better to fit the director’s simplistic and misanthropic worldview.