Tales from the Gimli Hospital

In this avant-garde Canadian film, a young Icelandic grandmother regales two children with an eerie and fantastical tale of Einar, a lonely fisherman who falls ill with smallpox and becomes embroiled in a strange competition for the affections of hospital nurses in a past version of Gimli, Manitoba. As Einar's story unfolds, it descends into surrealism, featuring elements of horror, fantasy, and dark humor. The film's dreamlike quality is matched only by its meticulous attention to period detail, with Guy Maddin's low-budget, black-and-white 16mm production evoking the eerie atmosphere of a bygone era.