The beautiful and surreal piece is due to land in 2021.

Today, Ólafur Arnalds revealed a new short film When We Are Born directed by Vincent Moon and produced by Mercury Studios, Petites Planètes and Akkeri Films for Mercury KX.

WHEN WE ARE BORN follows the recent release of Arnald’s newest album, some kind of peace. It traces his inner feelings of anxiety and reflects difficult emotions of letting go. Throughout the film, these feelings manifest in surrealistic and abstract symbolism.

Filmed in Iceland in the summer of 2020, the music throughout was performed and recorded live on set.

Speaking on the film Arnalds said:

“When We Are Born is a very personal journey set within a world that blurs the boundaries of reality… Recording everything live on set, including the music, in a long seamless sequence we wanted to feel the raw process of creativity within the film itself and to present the music as a reactionary element to the real life stories that influenced it.”

Director Vincent Moon has previously worked with the likes of Bon Ivor. R.E.M and The national. He said:

“A film is a magical spell cast on reality, an experiment on cosmic interactions with the people you work with. When Ólafur asked me to direct a short film around his new music, we quickly got into a talk regarding modern forms of shamanism – the obvious link with cinema and music as spiritual languages – and how this process of mutation, of metamorphosis, is very much at the center of our humankind giving birth, painfully, to a new era. I wanted formally to go back to my early work – long, unbroken takes with live music – while telling such a story of transformation through Ólafur’s perception of events around him. And to have him, literally, ‘born again’ to another dimension of reality.”

When We Are Born is set to drop in 2021. Watch the trailer for it below:

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