English summary

Set against brilliant images of Icelandic landscape, the tragicomedy Rams deservedly won the top prize in the Un Certain Regard section of the 2015 Cannes Film Festival.

Gummi and Kiddi, two brothers, live in a remote valley in Iceland. The rams of these two sheep farmers are among the best in the country and have already won numerous prizes. Although the two headstrong men share land and lifestyle, they haven’t spoken to each other in forty years. What they definitely have in common is a desire to defend the purity of their sheep breed and to protect their animals from extinction. They both have a distrust for modernity in other parts of the country, and especially for the intellectuals in the south. When there is an outbreak of disease, the authorities want to slaughter all animals in the valley. The brothers are forced to collaborate in order to prevail against the authorities and to save their beloved sheep. Here the movie Rams portrays a timelessness that, in the finale, is combined with existentialism in its purest imaginable form.