Nietzchka Keene’s haunting 1990 Icelandic supernatural drama, starring music icon Björk in her first feature film performance, has newly been restored by the Wisconsin Center for Film & Theater Research and The Film Foundation, with funding provided by the George Lucas Family Foundation.

Loosely based on a Brothers Grimm fairy tale of the same name, The Juniper Tree ominously opens with the death of Margit (Björk, in a riveting performance) and older sister Katla’s (Bryndis Petra Bragadottir) mother, by stoning. In need of protection and shelter, they find Johan and his young son, Jonas, who welcome them in, and a family unit begins form. But tensions rise between Johan and Katla, as the young son vies for attention from his father, who is preoccupied with Katla’s good looks and literal charms. Weaving witchcraft with the incredibly atmospheric backdrop of Iceland, The Juniper Tree is a stunning story that is evocative of Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Day of Wrathand Ingmar Bergman’s The Virgin Spring.

“Distinctive, ambitious, and genuinely poetic.” – Los Angeles Times

“...you might expect resonances of Ingmar Bergman or Carl Creyer, but The Juniper Tree has a voice all its own.” – Glenn Kenny, New York Times