01 Apr 2015
Director: Benedikt Erlingsson
Iceland, Germany
2013
81 min
Iceland’s Oscar submission and theatre director Benedikt Erlingsson’s debut, Of Horses and Men is a dark, inventive and very distinctive film set in a quirky horse-riding community in stunning rural Iceland. Pondering the relationship between man and horse (the direct translation of the original title is ‘Horse in us’) Erlingsson tells stories of horse owners and their beloved animals. Each vignette is introduced by a close-up of a horse with its owners’ face reflected in its eyes. Erlingsson depicts the struggles, romances and jealousies of key members of this small Icelandic hamlet with a bone-dry humour and set against a memorably beautiful landscape.