One of the main problems of the climate crisis is arguably the reporting, since numbers alone fail to convey the true significance of what has been lost. To be fair, correcting this imbalance would require us to reckon with the climate grief hiding behind the data and ask questions that humans have never had to ask before, such as, “How do you say goodbye to a glacier?”
This is the question that the Icelandic writer Andri Snær Magnason ponders in Sara Dosa’s latest documentary, Time and Water (2026). As in her first feature, Fire of Love (2022), Dosa focuses on the intense relationship between humans and their natural surroundings. And, in Time and Water, she could have no better subject than Magnason, whose life’s work has also been devoted to exploring similar themes. It’s for this reason that when Iceland decides to hold a funeral for Okjökull, the first glacier to be declared dead because of climate change in 2014, he is the one chosen to write the eulogy. Knowing that it would be inscribed in copper, thereby outlasting all of us by 6,000 years, he wisely titles it “A Letter to the Future”—an apt alternative title for the film.
Composed as a cinematic time capsule, Time and Water interweaves home movies, ancient texts, songs, and myths with striking present-day footage of Iceland’s glacial terrain in the hopes of briefly freezing the stream of time for future generations. This natural desire to preserve what we hold dear and pass it on is reflected in Magnason’s personal life as well, as he tries to capture his grandparents’ stories before they too slip away. It is this unique braiding of national archives with Magnason’s personal ones that poignantly showcases how a landscape is more than just a background to our lives, but a living force that shapes them. Magnason’s grandparents fell in love on the ice and it is this shared passion for mountaineering that helps bring Iceland’s glaciers to life throughout the documentary, as the old couple recounts the thrilling scent of glaciers in the spring or how they spent their honeymoon camped on top of one.
Most of all, Time and Water serves as a poetic reminder that all archives are ephemeral, no matter how durable we believe them to be, whether in the form of grandparents, who hold our families’ memories, or glaciers, which hold the earth’s frozen in their core. That’s why we must save what we can while we still have the chance. Even when the obstacles feel insurmountable, it's worth sending that message in a bottle. As Magnason explains in the film, “I cannot send you a glacier, but I can send you this.”
Time and Water screens Saturday, April 25, at the Premier Theater with director Sara Dosa and film subject Andri Snær Magnason in person.
