You don’t have the eyes of a thief, says her great-aunt, when Sól arrives. The nine-year-old girl was caught stealing and has been sent here to the country to help her relatives on the farm. It is hoped that life among the mountains and fields, the peat bogs and the cowsheds will help the taciturn young girl grow up. But tragic events are soon in the offing in the bleak landscape, when the farmer family’s daughter arrives home unannounced. The seasonal worker that Sól shares a room with is nice, but every night he writes in his notebook as if possessed. Director Ása Helga Hjörleifsdóttir has found an impressive visual syntax to convey the particular language of the eponymous novel by Gudbergur Bergsson. In her depiction of events, she rigorously adheres to the perspective of a young protagonist in early puberty, who is bit by bit learning a new way of understanding her surroundings.