After having witnessed her father’s brutal murder, three-year-old Alma and her mother fled their war-torn homeland and settled in Iceland. Now, 25 years later, Alma is serving time in a psych ward for murdering her boyfriend, a crime she can’t remember. But when she discovers the boyfriend is still alive, Alma decides to escape and kill him after all.

National Jury's motivation: Like all the other female inmates in a facility for the criminally insane, Alma has been convicted of murdering her male partner. To these women, the crash of the Icelandic economy in 2008 represents the potential collapse of the patriarchal order under which women have been abused, raped and mistreated through the ages and in whose prosperity they have had no share. This metaphor poignantly sets the stage for this multi-layered tale.

What starts out as a noir-ish revenge fable becomes a beautiful love story that centres around the process through which a victim of abuse finds her way through trauma and grief to finally rediscover her roots and her distinctive voice.

Employing biting humor as well as striking visual imagery Alma deftly combines an intense poetic vision and a socially critical feminist angle.