THE JUNIPER TREE (EINITRÉÐ) Cinema's Legacy

Nietschka Keene’s unheralded debut features a 20-year-old Björk as Margit, who escapes with sister Katla when their mother is killed for practicing witchcraft. To ensure their protection, Katla casts a love spell on a young widower, but his son is not so easily persuaded. In this insightful interpretation of the Brothers Grimm tale, Keene subverts a folkloric obsession with women and witchcraft to underscore the uncertain safety of women in a male-dominated society. Its dynamic score and rich, black-and-white cinematography imbue the sprawling Icelandic tundra with a delicate strangeness, obscuring the boundaries between reality and illusion, the living and the dead. THE JUNIPER TREE was restored in 2018 by the Wisconsin Center for Film & Theater Research, with funding provided from the The Film Foundation and the George Lucas Family Foundation. The film screens at AFI FEST as a world-premiere digital restoration. – Malin Kan