A refreshingly sensual forbidden love story with a supernatural twist. Danish director Kalle’s debut, which has found success on cinema screens in every corner of the world, is a gothic tale about two lovers determined to be together against all odds. Exploring the contrast between harshness and gentleness, two of Northern European cinema’s most notable talents – Egor Venned and Pilou Asbæk (Game of Thrones (2011–2019)) – share the screen.

On the Faroe Islands, the wind never really stops. Like the sea, memory holds on to things some would rather forget. In the 1860s, a young fisherman named Baldur lives a secluded life on the island with his mother, Ásla. One night, after hearing helpless cries from the sea, Baldur encounters a stranger – a whaler named Helge – who awakens something within him that has no place in this harsh world steeped in religion and prejudice. A love begins to grow between them – quiet, fragile and fateful.

Brokeback Mountain (2005), Stranger by the Lake (2013), and many other queer works of cinema set the emotional world of their characters against the vast, harsh, and untamable nature of the natural world. In his debut, Kalle also ventures into this territory, choosing to adapt a 1884 story by German writer and human rights advocate Karl Heinrich Ulrichs about the meeting of two people and their love that, in Latvian writer Blaumanis’s words, even death cannot defeat. The vampiric elements are more than mere genre conventions; they serve as a metaphor for the “sinful” love and timeless longing of Venned and Asbæk’s characters. The film premiered at the Fantasia International Film Festival in Montreal, where Kalle won the Best Director award.