Read what people are saying
A STRONG, SURPRISING DOC
“While its mystical subject defies logic, Sara Dosa’s verite film is cogent and appealing thanks to a savvy strategy. Dosa respects Ragga’s beliefs without endorsing them, and positions her activism as a metaphor for saving the environment. In fact, the activist group Ragga is part of focuses on protecting nature. Think of her as a poet rather than an elf-whisperer and this beautifully constructed film works for even the most rational viewers.” Read Full Review
EMBRACING ENTROPY
“The elevator pitch for Sara Dosa’s The Seer and the Unseen, which premiered at the San Francisco Film Festival last April, might have dwelled on the persistent belief in elves, trolls, and “hidden people” in Iceland. By all means, come for the elf sightings—part of a culture that Dosa respectfully and ingeniously honors—but stay for a stealth essay about overdevelopment and the fallacious fictions of capitalism, as well as a profile of a smart, funny, rational, environmentally committed protagonist who can, yes, observe a world hidden from standard view.” Read Full Review
ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVISM MEETS MYSTICISM IN SUBLIME NEW DOC
“Dosa’s film tracks Ragga’s consultations with various project managers and builders, attempting to maintain a balance between Iceland’s natural environment, which Ragga believes is filled with various elves, and the country’s rapid growth and development. While the set-up to the film is, somewhat, absurd, Dosa treats her subject with empathy, not so much pushing against Ragga’s beliefs but, instead, using elves as a metaphor for the environmental activism that Ragga and her group, Friends of the Lava Conservation, participate in.” Read Full Review
ELEGANT DOCUMENTARY FINDS UNEXPECTED ENVIRONMENTAL AND ECONOMIC DIMENSIONS
“Dosa’s film elegantly threads a very fine needle, affording Jónsdóttir a generous platform for her beliefs while taking no position as to where she falls on the visionary-crank spectrum. By framing her concern for the huldufólk as a potentially symbolic dimension of more tangible environmental activism and conservation, meanwhile, “The Seer and the Unseen” provides a lens for even the most skeptical viewers to identify real-world weight in her whimsy.” Read Full Review
ELF POWER IS NOT TO BE UNDERESTIMATED
“Since childhood, Ragga claims, she has been able to communicate with the elves, dwarfs, sprites, and trolls of local folklore who are denizens of the grounds that the roadbuilders will be digging up. At the very least she demands that the builders spare a giant rock which she calls an “Elf Church,” which lies in their path. Let us just say that elf power is not to be underestimated.” Read Full Review
A WINNING PORTRAIT OF EMPATHY
“In Sara Dosa’s charming trek to the wild outdoors of Iceland, it happens that many of the film’s imperiled subjects are invisible, perhaps only mythical creatures, who communicate through a kind of medium. The kindly Ragnhildur Jonsdottir, the film’s heroine, is an elf whisperer. The elves, whom half of the island’s population believe are real, are unnerved by an apparently pointless road construction project that will lay waste to a lava field outside Reykjavik. It is home not only to the elves, but other spiritual entities out of Icelandic folklore, dwarves and trolls—not always friendly creatures who shouldn’t be angered.” Read Full Review
AN INSPIRING ENVIRONMENTAL TALE
“Born from molten lava bursting its way to the surface, the country of Iceland possesses two parallel worlds tied together by nature. One world is the one we live in as humans. First trampled upon by the Vikings, but today a one-time vibrant urban center struck hard by the economic collapse of 2008. The other world is of the elves, living in nature among the coastal lava rock fields. They are known as the ‘hidden people,’ these elves live in harmony with nature but unseen to most people.” Read Full Review
A DARK ENVIRONMENTAL OUTLOOK IS BROUGHT TO LIFE
“With a calm, articulate central figure around to describe the situation that’s unfolding as if it were a dark fairy tale, the filmmaker masterfully draws a line between the 2006 real estate boom that left the country’s economy in tatters by 2008 as a result of overdevelopment and the too-good-to-be-true availability of credit lines and how the cycle is well underway to repeat itself as construction grows out of Reykjavik to more rural territories such as Garðabær where Jonsdottir makes her home.” Read Full Review
A RESOUNDINGLY EMPATHETIC FILM
“Sara Dosa’s documentary The Seer and the Unseen sounds like it has a quirky, somewhat outlandish premise, but it’s actually a resoundingly empathetic film that looks at Iceland’s ongoing economic woes from unique spiritual and ecological perspectives. It sounds strange, but viewers will be taken aback by how smart and universally relevant it all is. [. . .]You don’t have to believe in elves and hidden worlds to align yourself with Ragga’s advocacy in The Seer and the Unseen. You just have to share a the spirits’ distaste for governmental greed, wastefulness, and mismanagement.” Read Full Review
A GRANDMOTHER TAKES ON THE POWERS THAT BE
“The documentary’s depiction of efforts to stop development across one of Iceland’s magnificent lava fields is enchanting—and not just because Iceland’s legendary elves are the titular “unseen.” From an American perspective where political arguments more often than not devolve into rancor and recriminations, it is moving to watch this clash between capitalism and downright magical forces play out with such warmth and mutual respect.” Read Full Review
