Hen's Party

An older couple, Sigga and Runni, reveal funeral photos of their long-dead son who died tragically young. After thirty years, the photos still elicit painful differences between a grieving mother and her stoic husband; Rúna a housewife living in the harsh and isolated west fjords keeps funeral photos of a terrible family tragedy. For Rúna, they mark a profound event which forever changed her and which belong side by side with photos of weddings, confirmations and baptisms; Erlendur and his stepdaughter Úlfhildur, after nursing his wife through a long battle with cancer, use photography to record her on her deathbed, in peace at last. And Sigrún, morbidly fascinated with funerals and wakes, compulsively videotapes acquaintances' family funerals as a bulwark against her own fear of death. When she experiences death first hand however, her attitudes change.

Over the course of a year, we watch the bridge builder Haukur Karlsson and the musician Pál Pamphichler Pálsson at work, including the Eyjafjöll region on the south coast, Hvalfjörður and Skeiðarársandur, and Páll rehearsing the Reykjavík Brass Band for its anniversary concert, conducting the Icelandic Opera Orchestra in Der Fledermaus and having a work of his performed at a large open-air concert in Austria. The film suggests that all there certains themes common to all work, and that these men's occupations are not as different as they may seem to be at first glance.