Driving Mum

Jon drives a corpse across Iceland in Hilmar Oddsson’s darkly comic odyssey of self-discovery, beautifully filmed in crisp black and white.

Jón (Þröstur Leó Gunnarsson) spends his days knitting and listening to the radio with his domineering elderly mother (Kristbjörg Kjeld) on their rural Icelandic farmstead. But Jón’s isolated world is upended when his mum suddenly dies. Having left him a series of instructions to follow upon her death, Jón sets out on a journey across Iceland to honour her final wishes.

Beautifully filmed in crisp black and white, Hilmar Oddsson’s darkly comedic road movie is a bewitching 1980-set odyssey of self-discovery and acceptance, with a fantastic central performance from Gunnarsson and a scene-stealing family dog.