This October, see A Letter From Helga (Svar við bréfi Helgu, Iceland, 2022), a passionate love story set within the towering beauty of Iceland’s western fjords, at Scandinavia House! Director Ása Hjörleifsdóttir (an ASF Fellow) will be present for a film talk and Q&A following the screening.

In 1940s Iceland, the lives of two neighboring families are torn apart by a romance that develops between young farmer Bjarni (Thor Kristjansson) and aspiring poet Helga (Hera Hilmar). To their local community, both appear happily married: Bjarni to the beautiful Unnur (Anita Briem), tilling land that has been in his family for nine generations, and Helga to her husband Hallgrímur (Björn Thors), raising two children on a plot nearby. But when the two meet at a literary reading, they are immediately drawn together, and soon realize that they are haunted by shared feelings of disappointment and emptiness. As their affair intensifies, they both yearn to escape — but do they dare to leave everything behind? Based on a novella by Bergsveinn Birgisson, A Letter From Helga is a lyrical, sweeping story of forbidden love.

“Hjörleifsdóttir’s poignant adaptation churns with ardor, guilt, and regret about choices made and paths left unexplored” (The Seattle Times)