Nordisk Panorama 2021: Interview of Director Helga Rakel Rafnsdóttir | Spare Parts (Best Nordic Documentary Competition)

We interviewed Icelandic Director Helga Rakel Rafnsdóttir who presented Spare Parts at the 32nd Nordisk Panorama Film Festival, an observational, absorbing, poetic documentary.

The 32nd Nordisk Panorama Film Festival, taking place in Malmö, Sweden, from September 16th to 21st 2021, has become a hotspot for the best Nordic documentaries and short films, where we had the pleasure to discover, as part of the Best Nordic Documentary Competition, Spare Parts, a 45-minute documentary from Iceland, directed by Helga Rakel Rafnsdóttir. Shot over the course of 5 years, the film centers on a man who collects car wrecks amidst the scenic landscapes of Iceland. What unfolds on screen is an absorbing observational and poetic tale.

As pointed out by the synopsis, the main character of Spare Parts, Thorbjörn Steingrímsson, has a strange passion for wrecked cars, and his farm in the remote Westfjords of Iceland is full of them. Smashed windows bear witness of accidents and weathered logos tell a part of the industrial history of the area. In a glove compartment of an old Scania bus one may discover a bird’s nest. All kinds of stories come to life in Bjössi´s farm, a place that used to be a sheep farm but has now been turned into somewhat of a car farm, a place that some see as magical, while others find it to be nothing but a junkyard.

We were delighted to sit down with director Helga Rakel Rafnsdóttir for an interview following the screening of Spare Parts at Malmö’s Cinema Panora, to chat about the director’s creative choices and human experience which resulted in a beautifully crafted documentary, which was previously presented at the Skjaldborg Icelandic Documentary Film Festival in 2020, as well as at the 2021 edition of Visions du Réel.