This story of a lonely elderly couple who decide to return to their childhood home could have easily been trite, cloying, and overly sentimental. But writer/director Friðrik Þór Friðriksson handily side steps all of that by making Children of Nature increasingly fantastical as it unfolds over the course of a mere 80 minutes.

By the time the film enters its final act, it feels more akin to a fairy tale than a mere slice-of-life melodrama about aging. (Make no mistake, though: Friðriksson delivers more than a few jabs at modern society’s marginalization of the elderly and the older ways of life they represent.)

Iceland’s gorgeous scenery certainly makes it easy to buy into the film’s otherworldly journey, as does Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson’s heartbreaking and ethereal soundtrack. To date, Children of Nature is the only Icelandic film to be nominated for a “Best International Feature” Oscar, though it lost to Gabriele Salvatores’s Mediterraneo. Nevertheless, a group of critics voted Children of Nature the best Icelandic film of all time in 2018.