Her most recent work, “Time and Water,” which was filmed primarily near the Vatnajökull ice cap in the south of Iceland, and former glacier Okjökull in the western corner of the island, premiered at Sundance in January 2026. In this chapter, she digs into the story of award-winning Icelandic climate author Andri Snær Magnason’s grandparents, Hulda and Árn, and the simultaneous disappearance of one of the Icelandic glaciers that has been the backdrop to so many milestones in the couple’s lives.
Ahead, the director tells us about the task of filming in Icelandic weather, the creative connection she found with Magnason, and more.
A meeting of minds
It’s important to first understand the thoughtful collaboration between Dosa and Magnason—the latter penned the book “On Time and Water” (2019) and wrote the obituary plaque for Okjökull (Ok) glacier’s funeral service, which you can see installed on the volcano that used to house the ice. “Andrí and I met while working on ‘The Seer and the Unseen,’” Dosa says. “The way he puts ideas together is so unexpected and unique. I had a long conversation with him about the cultural representation of elves in Iceland, economic politics, and environmental politics—what he shared in that initial meeting really helped my approach to telling the story of ‘The Seer and the Unseen.’”
And as most creative collaborations go, it didn’t end there. “In 2019, an article Magnason wrote came out, centered around how to say goodbye to a glacier. I was so moved by it, and then I saw that Andrí had written it,” Dosa shares. “So I reached out to him to start a conversation around turning that article into a film, even before his book came out.”
When geology becomes genealogy
The film acts as a love letter, both to ancient chunks of ice and to two people who loved them deeply for what they were. “Andri would always say, Iceland is encoded in an invisible layer of stories,” Dosa says. There is a crew of main characters dancing in the spotlight here, both of flesh and ice. The film peppers archival footage of Hulda and Árn’s life together (that is, Andrí’s grandparents) alongside striking images of glaciers in repose. Subtle audio tracks the sound of ice on the move, views of clouds passing over glass-like ice, and there’s the eventual memorial for Ok. The film slowly sheds its main characters—receding ice, a grandfather lost, and a grandmother slipping away last.
