Blazing a triumphant trail through national and international festivals, having been shown at more than 100 in less than a year, Ice Merchants brought a kind of exposure to Portuguese cinema that had previously seemed the stuff of dreams. The film follows a man who lives with his son on a clifftop. Every day they parachute down from their cold, vertiginous house to visit the village on the plain below, where they sell the ice they collect during the night. Dispensing with dialogue entirely, the director uses music, also composed by him, to guide the audience through a world of family loss and love, as beautiful as it is melancholic.