June 18, 2026
FILM: TIME AND WATR
DIRECTED BY: SARA DOSA
RATING: 3 out of 4 stars
By Dan Pal
If you could create a time capsule for the future what would it include? For Andri Snaer Magnason it would be this film, which includes recollections about glaciers in Iceland, how they affected his family, and what he saw coming. Time and Water is the new film from director Sara Dosa, who previously was nominated for a Best Documentary Feature Oscar for Fire of Love. That film focused on a couple who died for their love of volcanos. Still interested in exploring the human attachment to nature, Dosa lets Magnason tell his story growing up near glaciers. It is his voice over narration that we hear throughout the film, and it is his many family home movies that are featured in this documentary to help illustrate the evolution and sad future for glaciers.
Magnason’s central story begins with the factual notion that glaciers are dying due to climate change. But rather than fill the film with a lot of statistics and numbers, Magnason recounts his own family’s involvement living near and studying the natural wonders. His grandparents, who we see in numerous videos and interviews, met on an icy mountain. Their archiving and research of Iceland’s glaciers provides visual proof of how many of them appeared in the past. Magnason and Dosa include plenty of footage of what some of them look like today too and how many are disappearing. There’s a prediction mentioned that in 200 years all of Iceland’s glaciers will be gone. This film then serves as a document to preserve at least a portion of their history and whether we did what we could do to save them.
There are other interesting visual and aural elements included in the film too. There’s footage of heavy winds and snows bombarding the glaciers. There’s a segment which showcases their blue-ish color. Perhaps most fascinating are the recordings of the sounds of moving glaciers. Sadly, we also see how birds, including the country’s famous puffins, are disappearing due to the climate changes affecting their resting places.
As fascinating as much of this is, the film’s narrative does tend to meander a bit in and out of family stories and the specific documentation and research associated with the rapid rate of glacier melting. This isn’t a major fault with the film as Magnason’s family is generally very interesting (his grandmother was the first woman to fly solo across the country.) However, there is some redundancy here which makes the 98-minute feel a bit longer than it is and leaves us wanting perhaps more facts.
Ultimately what Magnason and Dosa are trying to do is to establish a link between the generational shifts that take place within a family and a glacier’s life. They point out that ice records time, much in the same way that documentary films do. They assert that even water has its own history and memory that is evolving and telling a story. Similarly, photos and film footage record our histories. Another interesting analogy made is the passing down of music, specifically Icelandic rhymes that have made their way through the centuries. They tell stories of the country’s past which preserves them for future generations. In that sense a documentary like this may be the keeper of our history for viewers in the future. Of course, this assumes that people will be able watch today’s films 200 years from now! Where will they be stored? Will they be in files on flash drives? Remember, it wasn’t that long ago that floppy discs stored things we thought were important. Who can open those today?!
Regardless, we can only hope that people will care about history in the future. This film at least attempts to preserve something about our recent history and serves as a message that we knew what was happening to our environment. Only subsequent generations will know if we truly did anything about it.
Time and Water premiered at the Sundance Film Festival this year. It is playing in limited theatrical release including a run at the Gene Siskel Center in Chicago.
FILM: TIME AND WATR
DIRECTED BY: SARA DOSA
RATING: 3 out of 4 stars
By Dan Pal
If you could create a time capsule for the future what would it include? For Andri Snaer Magnason it would be this film, which includes recollections about glaciers in Iceland, how they affected his family, and what he saw coming. Time and Water is the new film from director Sara Dosa, who previously was nominated for a Best Documentary Feature Oscar for Fire of Love. That film focused on a couple who died for their love of volcanos. Still interested in exploring the human attachment to nature, Dosa lets Magnason tell his story growing up near glaciers. It is his voice over narration that we hear throughout the film, and it is his many family home movies that are featured in this documentary to help illustrate the evolution and sad future for glaciers.
Magnason’s central story begins with the factual notion that glaciers are dying due to climate change. But rather than fill the film with a lot of statistics and numbers, Magnason recounts his own family’s involvement living near and studying the natural wonders. His grandparents, who we see in numerous videos and interviews, met on an icy mountain. Their archiving and research of Iceland’s glaciers provides visual proof of how many of them appeared in the past. Magnason and Dosa include plenty of footage of what some of them look like today too and how many are disappearing. There’s a prediction mentioned that in 200 years all of Iceland’s glaciers will be gone. This film then serves as a document to preserve at least a portion of their history and whether we did what we could do to save them.
There are other interesting visual and aural elements included in the film too. There’s footage of heavy winds and snows bombarding the glaciers. There’s a segment which showcases their blue-ish color. Perhaps most fascinating are the recordings of the sounds of moving glaciers. Sadly, we also see how birds, including the country’s famous puffins, are disappearing due to the climate changes affecting their resting places.
As fascinating as much of this is, the film’s narrative does tend to meander a bit in and out of family stories and the specific documentation and research associated with the rapid rate of glacier melting. This isn’t a major fault with the film as Magnason’s family is generally very interesting (his grandmother was the first woman to fly solo across the country.) However, there is some redundancy here which makes the 98-minute feel a bit longer than it is and leaves us wanting perhaps more facts.
Ultimately what Magnason and Dosa are trying to do is to establish a link between the generational shifts that take place within a family and a glacier’s life. They point out that ice records time, much in the same way that documentary films do. They assert that even water has its own history and memory that is evolving and telling a story. Similarly, photos and film footage record our histories. Another interesting analogy made is the passing down of music, specifically Icelandic rhymes that have made their way through the centuries. They tell stories of the country’s past which preserves them for future generations. In that sense a documentary like this may be the keeper of our history for viewers in the future. Of course, this assumes that people will be able watch today’s films 200 years from now! Where will they be stored? Will they be in files on flash drives? Remember, it wasn’t that long ago that floppy discs stored things we thought were important. Who can open those today?!
Regardless, we can only hope that people will care about history in the future. This film at least attempts to preserve something about our recent history and serves as a message that we knew what was happening to our environment. Only subsequent generations will know if we truly did anything about it.
Time and Water premiered at the Sundance Film Festival this year. It is playing in limited theatrical release including a run at the Gene Siskel Center in Chicago.