The Seagull's Laughter (2001)

Original title

Mávahlátur

Directed by

Ágúst Guðmundsson

Genre

romantic comedy

Country

Iceland

Runtime

1h 44m

Rated

12

Rating

5.5 of 10 from 17 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

In a small Icelandic fishing town in the 1950s, a young orphaned girl named Agga is wary of her cousin Freyja who returns from America. Freyja has transformed from the shy teenager the town remembers into a confident woman who shakes up their quiet community.

warmbittersweetnostalgicgentlelightheartedcharacter-drivensunnyobservant

What happens

The Seagull's Laughter (Icelandic: Mávahlátur) is a 2001 Icelandic film directed by Ágúst Guðmundsson. It stars Ugla Egilsdóttir as Agga, an orphaned preteen distrusting of her cousin Freyja, played by Margrét Vilhjálmsdóttir, who turns heads on her return from America, no longer the chubby teen that the Icelandic townspeople remember. Set around 1950, the story portrays a pivotal moment in Iceland’s recent history: newly independent, with the legacy of the Second World War still prominent, Iceland is modernising and internationalising. The film is set in Hafnarfjörður, now effectively a suburb of Reykjavík, then a fishing town outside it. It is a close adaptation of the novel Mávahlátur by Kristín Marja Baldursdóttir, published in 1995 by Mál og menning. It was Iceland's submission to the 74th Academy Awards for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, but was not accepted as a nominee. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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