Black's Game

Black's Game (Svartur á leik, 2012) — watch online on iFILM. Directed by Óskar Thór Axelsson, this Icelandic crime thriller is set in Reykjavik at the end of the 1990s, when the city's drug scene flipped from small and contained to something genuinely ruthless in the span of a few years.

Based on Stefán Máni's novel, the film follows Stebbi, a young man who slides into a gang of pushers and discovers the rules change faster than he can learn them. Thor Kristjansson and Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson lead a cast with no obvious exits. Axelsson shoots it like a document rather than a morality tale — none of these people think they're in a cautionary story, which is what makes it unsettling.

Rare for Icelandic cinema of this scale and tone. Stream Black's Game online on iFILM.