What message would you leave for a future generation? What would you choose to preserve, in both object and memory, to help them understand the world you lived in? These questions sit at the heart of “Time and Water,” Academy Award-nominated director Sara Dosa’s latest film, inspired by the writing and family stories of renowned Icelandic poet and author Andri Snær Magnason.
Dosa has long been drawn to stories where the natural world is not just a backdrop, but a living presence. In “Time and Water,” that focus becomes deeply personal, weaving together family archives and glacial histories to draw viewers into a story about how memory, responsibility and care are passed from one generation to the next, and what future generations may inherit from the choices made today.
The director said her connection to Magnason’s work began years before “Time and Water” took shape. In 2019, she directed “The Seer and the Unseen,” a film shot in Iceland that followed an Icelandic woman who communicates with what she describes as nature spirits. Magnason served as a consultant on that project, and Dosa became familiar not only with his writing, but with the ethical framework that underpins it.
After that film was completed, Dosa came across an article Magnason wrote shortly after the funeral of Okjökull, Iceland’s first glacier, declared dead due to climate change. Titled “How do you say goodbye to a glacier?” the essay struck her with its emotional clarity. Rather than framing glacial loss solely in scientific terms, Magnason rooted it in memory, family and generational responsibility.
“To me, the article was devastating but profound in terms of the questions he was asking about this critical juncture in our planetary history, where these landscapes that have seemed eternal are now dying,” she said.
Magnason later shared with Dosa a manuscript he was working on, which would become “On Time and Water,” the book that serves as the foundation for the film.
While early conversations about adapting the material began, the pandemic stalled production.
During that period, Dosa and her team shifted to another project that could be completed remotely: “Fire of Love,” her acclaimed archival documentary about volcanologists Katia and Maurice Krafft.
When “Fire of Love” was released, Magnason reached out again, recognizing a kinship between the film and the story he had to tell. He suggested a collaboration built around glacier archives, seeing a parallel between Dosa’s approach to volcanic imagery and the material he had preserved over decades.
Dosa said the project resonated with what excites her as a filmmaker and reflected her broader ethical and political values.
“For me, this was extremely exciting,” Dosa said. “I’m always looking for stories where the sentience of more than human nature is at the center of the film, where we can really feel the power and aliveness of nature, as well as our own human entanglements within it.”
She emphasized the importance of storytelling that challenges extractive views of nature by highlighting human connection to the natural world and acknowledging the vitality and intelligence of landscapes like glaciers.
The result is a film composed largely of archival footage. Dosa estimates that roughly 85 percent of “Time and Water” comes from existing material, with the remainder shot specifically for the project. The goal, she said, was not to simply juxtapose old and new images, but to create a structure where multiple moments in time could exist at once.
“We always wanted it to be a polytemporal film,” she said. “We wanted it to feel like a collage of times, showing that our past is always present, and that our past and present are also within reach in the future.”
Much of the archival material comes from Magnason’s own family. His grandparents were among the first Icelanders to systematically document glaciers through photography and film, beginning in the mid-20th century. At the time, cameras were rare, and glaciers were largely viewed as foreboding and dangerous rather than places of recreation.
“It wasn’t somewhere you went to enjoy your time,” she said. “You crossed a glacier in order to get from one mountain to the next, or your sheep got lost on a glacier and you had to bring them down.”
Political and economic shifts in the 1950s began to change that relationship, and Magnason’s grandparents became pioneers in glacial exploration and documentation. Their footage, paired with decades of family films Magnason himself recorded, forms the emotional backbone of “Time and Water.”
Magnason was closely involved throughout the filmmaking process, contributing to the writing, narration and structure of the film. He and his family viewed multiple cuts and offered feedback, something Dosa said was essential to maintaining trust and accuracy.
“Turning over generations of personal archives takes a lot of courage,” she said. “We never took that lightly.”
The structure of the film functions as a time capsule: a message from a moment when glaciers were still alive, intended for future generations.
“Some of the themes in the film are very hard, it’s about death and grief and our climate crisis,” she said. “But I think that getting to channel some of my own worries, anxieties, fears, as well as joys and hopes, through an artistic process made me feel deeply grounded to what I believe in.”
Dosa said that in an especially uncertain and destabilizing time, staying connected to one’s internal compass and acting in alignment with personal values can embolden others to do the same.
“Time and Water” will premiere at 11:30 a.m. on Jan. 27 at the Library Center Theatre, followed by a Q and A with the cast and crew. For tickets, visit festival.sundance.org/program/film/6932fb4ebd8651648560fbe4.
‘Time and Water’ in-person screenings
- 11:30 a.m., Jan. 27, Library Center Theatre
- 3 p.m., Jan. 28, The Yarrow Theatre
- 9:40 a.m., Jan. 29, Megaplex Redstone
- 6 p.m., Jan. 30, Broadway Center Cinemas, Salt Lake City
- 1:50 p.m., Feb. 1, Megaplex Redstone
Online
- 8 a.m., Jan. 29-11:55 p.m., Feb. 1