AND BREATHE NORMALLY
A down and out single mother and an African woman seeking asylum in Iceland find themselves relying on one another in unexpected ways in this moving social-realist drama.
Living on Iceland’s windswept Reykjanes Peninsula, single mom Lára (Kristín Thóra Haraldsdóttir) struggles to make ends meet and put her troubled past behind her while she builds a better life for herself and her young son Eldar (Patrik Nökkvi Pétursson). Lára manages to land a job as a border patrol agent at nearby Keflavík International Airport, where she’s tasked with scrutinizing the passports of travelers attempting to enter the country. One of the travelers unlucky enough to be apprehended at the airport is Adja (Babetida Sadjo), a young woman fleeing her native Guinea Bissau and attempting to get to Canada. Stripped of her false passport, Adja is stranded in the bleak community around the airport while the government considers whether to grant her asylum. There, her path unexpectedly crosses that of Lára and Eldar. Despite their differences, the two women find unexpected sources of connection and wind up supporting each other in ways they never could have anticipated. In this engaging drama out of Sundance, writer-director Ísold Uggadóttir engages with hot-button topics of poverty, sexuality, and immigration, yet the film always remains skillfully grounded in the intimate, singular relationship between its complex female protagonists.
CAST: Kristín Thóra Haraldsdóttir, Babetida Sadjo, Patrik Nökkvi Pétursson
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