Metalhead explores the vast dimensions of grief and the redemptive power of heavy metal while having a tone as dark as leather. Released in 2013, this award-winning Icelandic drama boasts a turbo-charged metal soundtrack and authentic portrayals of the genre’s subculture. It avoids any of the formulaic niceties of conventional cinema, instead diving into an existential abyss where music lends catharsis for pain, identity and the isolation of rural life.
Writer/director Ragnar Bragason conceived Metalhead while teaching a course in film acting at the Academy Of The Arts in Iceland. Speaking to Wyrd Words & Effigies in 2014, he said, “The story didn’t present itself to me until around 2009, when I got an image into my head. It was of a girl in a leather jacket, holding a Flying V guitar, surrounded by cows.” It was a collage of contrasts: docile cows cut against a girl holding a hard, pointed instrument.
