The Day Iceland Stood Still: Film recalls turmoil, achievement of 1975’s ‘Women’s Day Off’
On October 24, 1975, Iceland paused.
Ninety percent of the nation’s women put down their tools, at work and at home, and took to the streets to demand equality, bringing the entire country to a near-stand still. The idea of a national strike by women was first proposed in 1970 by a group of feminists knowns as “the red stockings” for their signature, symbolic hosiery. But to get buy-in from reluctant conservative women in Iceland, the name was changed to “Women’s Day Off.”
Pamela Hogan’s feature documentary The Day Iceland Stood Still revisits that extraordinary day, marrying newly unearthed archival footage with intimate interviews and evocative animation. The result is a deeply moving chronicle of a 12-hour rupture that helped reset a country’s trajectory, and still echoes across the Far North today.
At a recent showing at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., Hogan said she grounded the film in the voices of the women who organized, marched, and held the line: teachers; factory workers; broadcasters; sailors and mothers who remember the logistics, the fear, and the laughter.
“When I went to Iceland in 2015 with my family, everybody was out photographing one day, and I was just thumbing through the Lonely Planet Guide, and I saw this little paragraph in the back of the guide saying that this incredible thing had happened, 90 percent of the country, and it had started this revolution that made the country number one in gender equality today, and honestly, my head exploded. How I could I not know this story?,” Hogan said. “And that’s what we’re hearing now as we show this film at festivals around the world. It’s the first thing that audiences say: How could I not know this story?”
Emotional Clarity
What lingers is the emotional clarity of moments captured a half-century ago. There are small, piercing moments, including a male radio host improvising childcare in his studio as the female employees departed to join the protest; men bewildered in supermarket aisles; and a young girl inspired to think that the world might be different by morning.
Hogan gives those memories space, then threads them into a wider fabric, showing how one day of absence forced a country to notice the labor it had long taken for granted, and how that day helped propel Iceland toward a reputation it now enjoys as a global leader on gender equality.
The film’s smartest choice is its use of animation. Rather than patch over gaps in the record with generic B-roll, the film leans into stylized sequences that “fill in between” the archival footage of strategy meetings, kitchen-table debates, and the nervous thrill of a crowd forming on Lækjartorg park in Reykjavik.
The animations never upstage the history; they clarify it, giving texture to moments that cameras missed and bridging the jump cuts of memory. It’s a technique that is both practical and poetic, beautifully and often humorously bridging the gaps between archival footage.
Hogan and producer Hrafnhildur Gunnarsdóttir, who wore her red stockings to the screening, also refuse to mythologize the strike into a single triumphant snapshot. We hear about the messiness in persuading skeptical unions, corralling childcare, and the uneasy humor of men (who dubbed October 24 “The Long Friday”). By keeping the lens tight on logistics and lived experience, the filmmakers avoid abstraction. Change looks like hand-drawn posters, hoarse voices, and aching feet.
Fifty years on, to be marked on Friday, Oct. 24, 2025, the documentary lands with fresh relevance. It arrives amid commemorations and new screenings linked to the anniversary, and against the backdrop of renewed walkouts in 2023 that drew an estimated 100,000 women, including Katrín Jakobsdóttir, Iceland’s prime minister from 2017-2024.
The film doesn’t belabor the present, but it quietly asks a contemporary question: what would a “Long Friday” look like now, and who would we need to show up for?
