Heartstone

A remote fishing village in Iceland, one long summer. Thor and Kristján are inseparable best friends, two boys on the edge of adolescence who spend their days fishing, running wild across the lava fields, and trying to impress girls. Thor is still small and childlike, desperate to grow up and win the attention of a girl called Beta. Kristján helps him, and slowly realises that what he feels for Thor is more than friendship. In a village where everyone knows everyone, and where being different is dangerous, he has no one to tell.

Guðmundur Arnar Guðmundsson made this as his first feature, and he shoots the Icelandic landscape with a mix of wonder and menace: endless light, black rocks, the sea, and an emptiness that makes the boys' emotions feel enormous. The young actors are completely natural, and the film catches the cruelty and tenderness of being thirteen with rare precision. The families around them are falling apart in their own ways, and nobody has much time for the children.

It is long and slow, and some side stories drift. But the central friendship is so tender and so painful that it carries everything. A coming-of-age film about first love, shame and the courage it takes to be yourself in a small place. It premiered at Venice and won the Queer Lion. Beautiful and heartbreaking.