Trailer
Plot summary
When both are eight, Otto sees Ana for the first time in the forest by their school, and neither says a word. Ana is there grieving her father, who has died. The next morning Otto sends paper airplanes over the schoolyard carrying a question about love; reading them, his father Álvaro meets Ana's mother Olga, and the two later marry. Otto is glad, because the marriage puts him near Ana. As teenagers the stepsiblings keep their feelings hidden. Otto moves into his father's house, and a night of homework turns to Finland and the midnight sun. Ana rests her head on his chest to listen to his heartbeat, and they kiss. A note passed at a family barbecue brings him to her bedroom, where they become lovers.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Lovers of the Arctic Circle (1998)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Writer-director Julio Medem based part of the film on his own experience of unrequited teenage love for his next door neighbor, turning a real adolescent crush into the story of Otto and Ana.
- Medem put his own parentage into the film with a scene in which a Basque farmer rescues a stranded German paratrooper, referencing his Basque mother and German father; he called it "a way of bringing together the two sides of my family."
