Lately, I’ve found myself drawn to the imagery of Iceland. The terrain is rugged and sparse. Snow-capped mountains far away, somehow they appear inviting yet also threatening. Then there’s the volcanos and the immense cold that comes as a direct opposition to their propulsive lava.
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I mean, it’s no surprise that it’s a place that filmmakers like Ridley Scott and Christopher Nolan trek to Iceland to use it as a vessel for otherworldly imagery. It feels distinctly familiar, yet, so far from our routine world of cities, bitumen, and cars.
It’s the kind of landscape that makes you understand why father-son duo Geoff Wilson and Kitale Wilson would head across its hills and valleys with a pair of horses to embark on some kind of modern form of ‘exploration’. Naturally, it’s 2025, so the notion of explorers and adventurers seems a bit, well, antiquated, or at the very least, privileged about the whole experience.
The press release that I received for the short film A Silent Rebellion details the film as being ‘a moving doc on legacy, masculinity, and climate grief’. It’s co-directed by Kitale alongside Dom Gould, both of whom take up the role of cinematographers alongside Jordan Pearson and Vincent Tran. And it is stunning to look at – how could it not be? It is Iceland after all.
Sara Wolff’s poetic narration overlays this glorious imagery. The words reflect the landscape, talking of a time that’s past, as if Sara’s voice is someone looking at the past, a place that’s now long gone and that exists alone in a memory. It’s rather tranquil.
It also allows the aspects of masculinity to reside under the surface as Geoff and Kitale’s almost silent presence in the film stands as visual evidence of a father and son connecting through a long journey. Solitude with a sibling or a parent is a difficult thing to endure at times, and while there’s no evidence of friction between Geoff and Kitale, we do feel two individuals growing together, alongside one another, understanding what it means to be a father and what it means to be a son.
Now, the other aspect of the press release that, thankfully, wasn’t as present in my conversation with Kitale, which you’ll hear in a moment, was the funding support from Dometic who assisted in the making of the film. This is the second time that the company has supported Geoff and Kitale’s Project Zero adventure, and as this is an ad-free platform, I won’t delve too far into what Dometic is or does, other than to say that they say they’re a company that intends to assist ‘environmentally conscious explorers’ like Geoff and Kitale by creating low-impact materials.
Again, there’s a level of privilege that comes with being able to travel the world and embark on expeditions and journeys like this, and if I were a more pressing interviewer, I might have switched into interrogation mode in the following interview with Kitale. But, I’m not that kind of interviewer. Instead, I’m one who is fascinated by the nature, the beauty, the way it changes our mind, and equally so, how relationships between fathers and sons can be supported through expeditions like this.
I ask Kitale about what natures means to him, especially now that he lives in a city like he does in the UK. His answers are similar to the ones that The Road to Patagonia director Matty Hannon had when I interviewed him last year for that films release: being in nature helps heal the mind. It’s helps provide an aspect of salvation for us. I’ll repeat myself once more: we may not all get the chance to travel to Iceland and experience nature in the way that Geoff and Kitale do here, but we can certainly understand and appreciate the way being within nature enriches us.
It's along that line of dialogue that I open up this interview with Kitale. A Silent Rebellion is making its way around festival circuits. To find out more about Kitale’s work visit his Instagram here and the work of his co-director Dom Gould here.
To find out more about Kitale's expedition, read his journal here.