Note: Q&A with director Hrafn Gunnlaugsson has been cancelled.

Setting out to offer a rejoinder to the Hollywood image of the Vikings, Hrafn Gunnlaugsson’s third film recounts the adventures of Gestur, an Irishman who as a boy witnessed the murder of his two parents and the abduction of his sister during a Viking raid. Working his way into the graces of one of the bands, Gestur gets to know the two Norwegian brothers, Thor and Erik, who led the raid and now keep his sister between them. The film doesn’t back off from the violence of the era, but it does provide more of a context for understanding the workings of that long-ago world. Meticulously recreated, When the Raven Flies was voted one of the outstanding films of the Eighties at the Tokyo International Film Festival