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Contact Sunna at
sunna@bjartsyn.is
Director Anastasiia Bortuali
DoP Sebastian Ziegler
Supported by the Icelandic Film Center, Documentary Campus and RÚV
Principal photography is currently planned for Autumn 2026
In Iceland, winter arrives early and stays long. For two migrant teenagers living through it, this particular winter is also a threshold — the last stretch of childhood before adulthood lands with its demands. And in a small Ukrainian town too close to the frontline, a third teenager is watching a different kind of threshold approach: not the one she always imagined, but one that may soon be chosen for her.
18 Winters is a verité documentary that follows three young people — each on the edge of turning eighteen, each carrying a different relationship to the word home. In Iceland, a Polish boy who came there as a small child has grown up between worlds, never quite landing in either. He does not find a home in a country or a language. Still, in his faith, he gets a sense of belonging he can carry with him. Alongside him, a Somali girl waits for a long-term residency permit with the particular patience of someone who has lived through insecurity. Home, for her, is not something physical — but a feeling of safety.
In Ukraine, a girl has spent years dreaming of leaving her small hometown. Now that leaving may no longer be her choice, she finds herself grieving something she never thought she wanted to keep.
All three are searching for a future — without yet knowing where, or whether, it will be theirs to choose.
The camera observes. And sometimes, they hold it themselves.
Together, their stories accumulate into something larger than any single life — a portrait of what it means to be young, displaced, and still becoming.
One long, dark season that changes everything.