Rams takes place in a still, stark Icelandic farming valley. The average American urbanite has little in common with that setting, but it's the setting that will lure those viewers in. The film's gorgeous cinematography captures a world that couldn't feel more distant from a life of smartphone notifications and open office structures. Within the first few minutes of watching, it feels as if Icelandic director Grímur Hákonarson is inviting you to pull on a heavy wool sweater and stay for a cup of tea.

Very quickly, however, it's also revealed that not all is right in the quaint, hardworking hamlet where the main character, an elderly sheepherder named Gummi, lives. A terrifying disease called Scrapie—the mad cow disease of sheep and goats—has afflicted the prized ram of Gummi's estranged brother Kiddi. Not only that: We soon learn that Kiddi's ram was used to sire other flocks in the valley, and the disease is so contagious that it looks like all the flocks will have to be eliminated.

Gummi, who has little to no social interactions and seemingly derives all of his life's pleasures from continuing to take care of his ancestral breed of sheep, soon comes up with a creative, desperate solution to hide a handful of survivors from the sheep police, a.k.a. the health authorities. Gummi is Noah and he is preparing his ark; the sheep will be used to launch a new sheep society after the scourge of disease has subsided.

You end up rooting for Gummi as the effort to save his sheep—to save his whole identity, to save his his culture—becomes more and more dangerous. At the same time, Gummi also wrestles with an equally desperate, deeply alcoholic brother, Kiddi, who has a habit of falling asleep in the snow after drunken rages. Dutifully, Gummi retrieves his near-dead brother from the bitter cold and revives him in a bathtub.

But aside from whatever sympathy viewers may have for Gummi's plight, the average Seattleite seeing Rams in theaters may soon be able to feel for Gummi and his brother over more than just the loss of sheep.

After all, the timing of the film's release suggests that we're not just talking about sheepherders in one valley in Iceland. In the age of the Anthropocene, long-accepted truth about how the natural world works is changing. Change will be seen in plants and the smallest animals first. Destruction often magnifies as it moves up the food chain. The people most closely tied to our radically shifting ecosystems—often those living traditional or indigenous lifestyles off the land—will be forced to die or adapt first. By the time climate change pains the class of people reliant on a globalized food chain and virtual technologies, the window of opportunity to adapt may have disappeared.

By that point, it may be too late to bring that society back to life.