And Breathe Normally

Lára, a single mother, is barely able to support herself and her young son, but she has no intention of asking anyone for help. Her only chance to improve their lives is if she can get a permanent job with the border guard. Trying to prove before herself to her superiors, she helps detain a man-Adji-trying to cross the border illegally on a false passport. She doesn't realize then that their paths are going to cross again many times. In her debut film, Ísold Uggadóttir discusses problems that she is very familiar with: as a volunteer with the Icelandic Red Cross, she helped refugees personally. Adopting the perspective of people the rest of society would prefer not to notice, and with the help of Polish cinematographer Ita Zbroniec-Zajt, she examines, with no illusions, the rusty mechanisms of Icelandic bureaucracy, where people rarely come first and where the answer to every difficult question remains unchanged: That's the way the system is.