Hlemmur (2002)

Reykjavik, a strange combination of village and adolescent city. Bus connections are so poor here that people only use them as a last resort: children and teenagers, the poor, the old, the sick, the strange. No wonder Hlemmur, Reykjavik’s biggest bus station, is the most disdained place in Iceland’s capital It is these regular visitors to the Hlemmur bus station that the camera observes. People who have made Hlemmur their second home. They are almost all men and their common goal seems to be to find a way of passing the time. Most of them once had a family, a wife and children, but now they are alone. Something has thrown them off-track: some have been ruined by drink, others struggle with serious mental illnesses, others are on benefit or are simply old and lonely But as one of the film’s protagonists points out, no one asks whether life is fair. In winter, the homeless have little choice but to crawl under a tree and spend the night there when they are drunk, or try their luck at the &