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Nest
Hreiður
Between 2020 and 2021, the Icelandic filmmaker Hlynur Pálmason filmed his three children building a tree house in their backyard. Using a fixed frame, his lockdown project yielded a fascinating study of the seasons grounded in the leisurely rhythms of kids at play.
Pálmason’s Nest is a deceptively simple film, made as a collaboration between father and children. While the bulk of the film observes the real-life construction of the kids’ tree house, Pálmason sneaks in little scenes of fiction to introduce an element of mystery into its fold. According to him, “sometimes [he] had an idea, something they had an idea” and while filming the construction, they jointly found themselves piecing together a narrative that spoke to the unexpected hardships of building a tree house.
Pálmason stated that “not knowing where to go” made his film “exciting, because I think that reflects or colours the film.” Nest — in spite of its rigorous, formal camerawork — works in similarly mysterious ways, slowly unfurling surprises that transform the straightforward task of looking at the same frame into a thrilling experience.
Bio Hlynur Pálmason
Icelandic film director and visual artist Hlynur Pálmason (1984) studied at the National Film School of Denmark in Copenhagen and lived in the country for 10 years before returning to Höfn, a town on the Hornafjörður fjord. Pálmason states to be more interested in “the narrative style and flow of films” than the actual plotline. His debut Winter Brothers (Vinterbrødre) debuted at the Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland in 2017. His second feature, A White White Day, was selected at the Cannes Film Festival and Iceland’s submission for the Academy Awards in 2020. His short film Nest (2022) premiered at the Berlinale and won several international awards.
Nest is not limited to an exploration of human dynamics within the children’s microcosmos, but more so becomes a study of their habitat and environment, which aligns with the decision to place the camera at a distance from the characters. Though we might have suffered from a lack of close-ups and facial expressions, rendering the children more like LEGO minifigures than dramatic protagonists, we benefited from a panoramic view of a marvelous transforming scenery. People and nature are equally important in Nest, and both are handled with care and tenderness.
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- This film was #78 in the “Greatest” Short Films of All Time 2025