After the global success of his Un Certain Regard winner Rams, director Grímur Hákonarson returns to his native Iceland with another humanist farmland fable. When we first meet Inga (Arndís Hrönn Egilsdóttir), she is midwifing a calf in the middle of another back-breaking day on the small, nearly-bankrupt dairy farm she shares with her husband, Reynir (Hinrik Ólafsson). She is one of many hard-working farmers in her region who work under a bureaucratic co-operative that, having fallen out of the control of its farmers, operates as a monopoly, pushing her and her community deep into debt. After Reynir’s sudden and suspicious death, Inga learns the true extent of both her powerlessness and her late husband’s involvement with the co-op’s schemings. With an eye towards the future, and no other options, she aims to chip away at the co-op’s domination. Bitterly funny and deeply affecting, The County plays out a timely political allegory against a jaw-dropping natural landscape, aided by a brainy, tenacious anti-heroine and Hákonarson’s dry Nordic humor.