Angunnguaq Larsen is busy establishing the sound tools for the Aasapalaaq Competition, one of many main cultural occasions of the summer time right here in Nuuk, Greenland’s capital. It’s late August, and Greenlanders know to reap the benefits of a sunny day earlier than the climate turns into insufferable. Native teams promote scorching chocolate, espresso, and tea. Youngsters mess around Aqqaluk Sq. whereas grandparents sit on folding chairs.
Household leisure begins within the morning, with some smaller acts taking on the afternoon. Because the solar units, legendary singer-songwriter Rasmus Lyberth takes the stage together with his guitar. When his raspy voice reaches the excessive notes of “Nipaannerup Anersaava (The Spirit of Silence)”, a teary-eyed crowd joins in. Lyberth is a supply of nationwide satisfaction, one of many few native musicians whose fame has unfold past the island.
In between songs, individuals hold approaching Larsen, who can be a neighborhood celeb. Regardless of commonly working as a sound technician and music professor, he has starred in a few of Greenland’s most well-known films. In 2009, he appeared in Nuummioq, a narrative a few development employee who finds love proper when he will get recognized with most cancers, thought-about to be the primary characteristic movie solely produced in Greenland. He’s additionally the go-to Inuit actor for worldwide productions. Only recently, he starred within the fourth season of True Detective, Netflix’s Skinny Ice, and, earlier than that, he performed Greenland’s mysterious prime minister within the hit Danish TV present Borgen.
- Actor Angunnguaq Larsen in entrance of Katuaq, Nuuk’s cultural middle, the place he usually works as a sound technician, on Aug. 21, 2025.
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A person with a guitar opens his mouth and closes his eyes as he sings in entrance of a microphone on a stage. - Musician Rasmus Lyberth performs on the Asarpalaaq Competition in Nuuk on Aug. 23, 2025. Pau Torres Pagès for International Coverage
Angunnguaq is an award-winning worldwide star, however he can not but make a dwelling solely from his performing. Greenlandic native movies are scarce and worldwide productions solely flip to him for the restricted Arctic Indigenous roles. “If I had blue eyes and blond hair, I might work on a regular basis,” he advised International Coverage, solely half-jokingly. “It takes time, however in 10 years, I hope there’s a movie business right here.”
Greenland is an autonomous territory within the Kingdom of Denmark, and over 80 p.c of Greenlanders assist the island’s independence. A fair increased share are against any speak of a U.S. takeover. On this context, cinema is seen as a software to signify the island’s id and aspirations, each at residence and overseas. For too lengthy, Greenlandic tales have been advised by overseas filmmakers, usually specializing in issues like alcoholism, despair, or suicide. Now, a brand new group of artists is attempting to reclaim their very own voice—and assist chart their very own political future.
Ruth, who initially of Partitions – Akinni Inuk had served 9 years of an indefinite preventive detention sentence, stands behind a fence in Nuuk’s jail. Sofie Rørdam/courtesy of Anorak Movie
For now, most Greenlandic filmmakers want to speak a few “movie group” quite than a “movie business,” highlighting the significance that beginner tasks have had on the island. Nonetheless, professionalization is now not a far-fetched dream.
In January, a brand new movie institute is ready to start out operations and plenty of hope will probably be a much-needed step in direction of professionalization. And for the third time ever and the primary since 2012, Greenland submitted a movie for consideration within the 2026 Oscars’ Finest Worldwide Movie class.
“Denmark has an extended historical past in cinema of constructing movies in Greenland, however by no means by Greenlandic filmmakers,” stated Emile Hertling Péronard, who has spent the previous decade attempting to provide and export native tales. “It was all the time tremendous troublesome for us to get even distribution or anything in Denmark; there merely wasn’t an curiosity.” Within the early 2010s, there was a push from the movie group that led to 2 submissions on the Oscars, however the momentum later died down. With roughly 57,000 inhabitants, the island is the least populated territory to submit a movie to this yr’s Oscars, by far.
Péronard is a part of the manufacturing group behind the movie chosen to signify the nation on the Academy Awards this yr. Partitions – Akinni Inuk is a documentary filmed over eight years that portrays the lonely lifetime of a lady indefinitely incarcerated in Nuuk. Co-directed by Sofie Rordam, who’s Danish, and Greenlander Nina Paninnguaq Skydsbjerg, the deeply private characteristic lastly fulfilled the necessities. Based on the Greenland Oscar Committee, a movie is taken into account Greenlandic if an individual or entity accountable for greater than half of its manufacturing duties is predicated in Greenland or has a powerful household reference to the island.
In a context the place collaboration between Greenlanders and Danes has usually been the norm, the traces can get blurry. With a small group of movie professionals, it is not uncommon for crews to require Danish expertise or manufacturing. To at the present time, the movie group is split on what makes for a Greenlandic movie. The present rule would exclude, for instance, a characteristic directed, written, and starring Greenlanders if the producers have been Danish.
Much more established minority cinemas haven’t settled the dilemma of their respective regional awards. In Catalonia, the origin of the manufacturing firm is just not sufficient; a degree system decides whether or not there may be sufficient native expertise concerned. In Quebec, a three-tier system based mostly on the origins of the forged and crew defines who’s eligible for what class.
“For the final three years, we’ve got had an Oscar committee,” stated Klaus Georg Hansen, head of the filmmakers’ group Movie.GL. “However within the first two, we didn’t have a movie.” Regardless that this yr’s entry didn’t make it to the shortlist preselection rounds, simply submitting is taken into account a neighborhood victory. Now, with an rising world sensibility towards Indigenous voices and since Donald Trump has put the island in world headlines, Hansen and Péronard suppose that higher curiosity may result in extra worldwide funding.
A waterfall in Nuup Kangerlua (Nuuk Fjord) on Aug. 26, 2025. Pau Torres Pagès for International Coverage
In February 2025, the discharge of one other documentary was acquired as a bombshell each in Denmark and on the island, significantly because it arrived proper earlier than Greenland’s elections. Broadcast by the Danish public-service station, White Gold of Greenland claimed that the extraction of cryolite, a uncommon mineral mined within the southern tip of the island between 1854 and 1987, generated 400 billion Danish kroner ($62 billion), in in the present day’s worth, for the Danish-led operation. At a time when many Danes argue that Greenland has lengthy been a burden on Danish public funds, the movie supplied an alternate narrative of European exploitation.
Many politicians and economists in Denmark claimed that the determine was deceptive, because it referred to the operation’s income earlier than accounting for its prices, quite than the precise revenue. However the filmmakers stood by the calculations. They argued that, in a colonial setting, Denmark benefited not solely from the corporate’s direct earnings but in addition its expenditures, which went towards using Danish nationals or utilizing Danish-built ships to move the mineral.
DR, the Danish broadcaster, additionally initially stood behind the documentary earlier than in the end deciding to take it down from its web site. The dispute reportedly led to the compelled resignation of the broadcaster’s information editor-in-chief, Thomas Falbe. In Greenland, the controversy was acquired as yet one more denial of Denmark’s lasting colonial legacy at a time when the USA was making clear its intentions to accumulate the island.
White Gold of Greenland and the story of its launch assist reveal the political stakes of home movie. Anders Gronlund, a postdoctoral fellow at Lund College who wrote his dissertation on Greenlandic cinema, calls the method of reclaiming storytelling “narrative sovereignty.” On this method, cinema is inextricably linked to the island’s drive for higher political self-determination.
The motion is partly impressed by the Sami individuals’s achievements in telling their very own tales. In 2009, the Indigenous group that stretches over the north of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia, arrange a movie institute with the monetary assist of the Norwegian authorities. Since then, it has managed to interrupt into the mainstream of the movie sector, screening movies in European festivals and establishing a inventive lab with Netflix. Annually, the institute helps a dozen Sami productions at any stage of the event course of, from scriptwriting to distribution. It even has its personal streaming service, Sapmifilm.
Otto Rosing, who directed Nuummioq, was motivated to point out the life he knew in Greenland and keep away from a stereotypical illustration that had change into the norm in onscreen portrayals. “It isn’t a narrative of sexual immorality, homicide, and arson, neither is it the gorgeous hunter on the ice. It’s a story someplace in between,” he advised Kosmorama journal.
His film, a dramedy a few group of pals who should face the intense sickness of one among them, is a break from earlier cinema concerning the island. The protagonists shoot a industrial in English, drink at loud bars, eat Thai meals, and purchase palm bushes. The educational Kirsten Thisted has known as it an early instance of the concept of the “cosmopolitan Inuit.” Rosing exhibits Greenlanders absolutely embracing modernity as a substitute of affected by it. “You don’t see this notion of the colourful fashionable Greenland in documentaries or earlier movies,” says Gronlund. For him, it additionally units Greenlandic cinema aside from different Indigenous movie industries which have a higher post-colonial focus.
The statue of Hans Egede, the Lutheran priest and missionary who colonized the island in 1721, overlooks Nuuk on Aug. 13, 2025. Pau Torres Pagès for International Coverage
The total deployment of the brand new Greenlandic Movie Institute this month is ready to select up the work that Hansen, Péronard, and others have been doing voluntarily and formalize it with a finances, a small group, and an already-appointed board.
After the institution of the self-rule authorities in 1979, cultural coverage turned a competence of native authorities. Since then, Greenlandic productions have been excluded from most of the Danish Movie Institute’s funding alternatives, severely lowering budgets. The Greenlandic Movie Institute will now have the accountability to start out a fund to finance Greenlandic productions, according to the usual in lots of European nations. The sum of money allotted to the fund stays unclear, on condition that the Greenlandic authorities not too long ago introduced sweeping nationwide finances cuts.
The institute can even be tasked with selling the island as a location vacation spot for movies, which may assist stimulate financial development. In early December, filmmaker Klaus Georg Hansen flew to London to attend one of many largest movie location gatherings in Europe, Focus 2025. It was the fifth yr Movie.GL was selling Greenland’s landscapes, a job that may presumably be picked up by a brand new movie commissioner this yr, as soon as the place is crammed.
On the very least, Movie.GL desires worldwide films portraying Greenland to movie these sequences within the island. They’re dedicated to the precept of “nothing about us with out us.” “It’s not all the time solely about being the one telling the tales,” researcher Gronlund advised International Coverage. “But additionally having some type of company in what different persons are telling, getting a seat on the desk.”
In recent times, a number of worldwide productions depicting Greenland have really discovered the glacial surroundings elsewhere. In Ben Stiller’s The Secret Lifetime of Walter Mitty, scenes meant to happen in Nuuk have been filmed within the Icelandic fishing city of Stykkisholmur. In Ric Roman Waugh’s motion blockbuster Greenland, the movie crew by no means set foot on the titular island.
Within the movie business, taking pictures in a location completely different that’s not the territory portrayed is a standard apply. Nonetheless, Greenlanders would love worldwide filmmakers who wish to speak concerning the island to go and movie there. That would offer a chance increase for native expertise and different sectors, like transportation and catering. However the causes transcend the cash. “In a post-colonial context, way more emotion and emotions are related to land and illustration,” stated Grolund.
Because the institute is ready to start out operations and the world continues discussing the way forward for the island, many within the movie group really feel that the stakes at the moment are increased than ever. There may be strain to ship. “We’re constructing a nation,” stated Péronard. “The tales that we get to inform are very a lot a part of that shaping.”
