‘Time and Water’ Review: A Poetic and Haunting Elegy for a Glacier

Framed as a time capsule from Icelandic writer Andri Snær Magnason to the future, “Time and Water” — the magnificent new documentary from Oscar-nominated “Fire of Love” director Sara Dosa — is a film about archives. Personal archives from Magnason and his family that connect generations. The historic archives of Iceland that contain its mythic past. But also the archives made by the Earth herself, its past trials and tribulations frozen among its glaciers in the amber of time. What happens when the ice melts? Does our history go with it?

A nature doc mixed with autobiography, “Time and Water” is a poetic musing on intergenerational memory, a whimsical, yet staunchly political elegy for the glaciers, and a mournful look at the Earth in all her majesty and mystery — one that shows how craven capitalism over the last several hundred years has destroyed her, not just for the present, but for the future as well. Dosa’s film asks: If glaciers are an archive of the Earth, how will we move into the future when we’re no longer connected directly to our past?

The film begins with Magnason’s voiceover asking that if this time capsule is found in the future that whoever finds it should press play. The sound of VHS tracking is heard, a blue screen appears as if an old video tape were about to start, and then gorgeous footage of the ice fills the frame. “We have lived with the ice for a thousand years,” Magnason says as he retells the story of how Iceland formed in a collision of fire and ice. He’s 53 years old now, narrating from the present. A montage of Iceland plays like a slideshow filled with beautiful imagery of ice, the running water of cool springs, the ash and fire of volcanoes, wild ponies and birds, the ethereal northern lights, impossibly verdant green grasses, and purple pink sunsets. 

He then tells the story of his grandparents, Jón and Hulda, who were some of the first explorers of Iceland’s many glaciers, gathering not only their oral histories of these explorations, but also beautiful color footage shot in the 1950s. In one sequence the footage goes deep inside a glacier, capturing not only its magnitude, but also its unique sound. “This is how a glacier sounds… you can’t quite see it, but it’s moving,” we’re told. Movement, you see, is what defines a glacier. It’s ice that has become alive.

‘Time and Water’Archival Materials Courtesy of A

Dosa’s movie is alive as well, though all of this beauty is interrupted when Magnason shares that he is the “first to say goodbye to something that we never thought we could lose.” That is, the Okjökull glacier, formally one of the smallest glaciers in the world. It officially died in 2019. It was 700 years old. A glacier is officially dead not just when it shrinks, but when the ice doesn’t move anymore. Until modern times, glaciers lived on geological time, measuring change in centuries and millennia, not months and years. Unfortunately, that is no longer the case. It is estimated that in 200 years, there will be no more glaciers in Iceland. What happens to the archive of the planet that lives inside them?

The film compares the knowledge of Earth that is held within the ice to several more conventional forms of archiving. One of Magnason’s first jobs was at the National Archives of Iceland, where he was surrounded by books about the old Norse gods, colonial histories, and even stories about elves. As he describes his time in this trove, the stories come alive in beautiful rendered animation reminiscent of illustrated manuscripts. Eventually, he tells of a cache of recorded traditional song-poems known as rímurs that he found. One such recording, a melancholic tune sung by an old woman about the end of times, plays as footage of Iceland from a hundred years ago fills the screen. Magnason was so moved by the rímur that he began to archive his own life with a video camera. “From this point forward,” he shares, ” I kept the camera rolling and recorded everything I love.”

Through Magnason’s personal home video archive, we learn about his grandparents, his parents, his relationship with the mother of his children, and their kids as they grow. Through these generations we see changes in Iceland as a country. A move away from traditional farm life as people migrate to the cities. Even as ways change, and people mark their time on this planet  in months and years, memories can be passed down that stretch them, making time immutable and life prolonged. The Earth is not so lucky. Once its time is gone, it’s gone. 

Towards the end of the film Magnason plays out a thought exercise. He films his daughter Hulda in conversation with his own grandmother, also named Hulda. His grandmother is 96 years old. His daughter will be 96 years old in the year 2104. Through them, Magnason muses, he can stretch time from the elder’s birth in 1924 to the younger Hulda’s future old age in the year 2104. In this scenario, his grandmother’s memories live on long beyond her own life, an archive passed down through generations. 

A lyric in the rímur that so moved Magnason when he was younger insists that the only way to keep the verse alive is to put it into the mouths of children. The same can be said for nature conservation. The only way our planet will survive is if young people keep the fight. As beautiful as this thought is, and as much as I admire Dosa for ending her film on a bittersweet, yet hopeful note, it’s hard to keep hope alive when science has been ignored for so long that the damage wrought on our planet in the last hundred years may very well be irrevocable. 

Magnason is tasked with writing the words that adorn the plaque that marks the place where the Okjökull Glacier once stood. He opts for a bleakly ominous message: “This monument is to acknowledge that we know what is happening and what needs to be done. Only you know if we did it.” Time will have to tell.

Grade: A

“Time and Water” premiered at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival. It is currently seeking U.S. distribution.

Want to stay up to date on IndieWire’s film reviews and critical thoughts? Subscribe here to our newly launched newsletter, In Review by David Ehrlich, in which our Chief Film Critic and Head Reviews Editor rounds up the best new reviews and streaming picks along with some exclusive musings — all only available to subscribers.