Lamb

The story of Valdimar Jóhannsson's new horror film Lamb is inspired by old folktales from Iceland. María (Noomi Rapace) and Ingvar (Hilmir Snær Guðnason), a couple who recently lost their baby daughter, is visited by a strange spirit in their barn that scares the animals: a ewe becomes pregnant with a bizarre animal-human hybrid and the grief-stricken Maria conceives a passionate attachment to the strange being, naming it Ada after her dead human daughter. As the creature becomes their replacement-child, one horrifying mystery after another plays out on the farm.

Lamb is a jawdropping horror-comedy about loneliness and sorrow. Both macabre and touching in its bizarre premise, Jóhannsson manages to create what feels as a surrealist, pleasurable gem for the patient audience, shot in the beautiful and bleak scenery of Iceland. In Cannes, Jóhansson’s eeriness brought success for Lamb, which won the ‘Un Certain Regard’s Prize of Originality’.