The Islands And The Whales
2016
UK
Dir: Mike Day
ENGLISH
82 mins
released 2016
In their remote home in the North Atlantic the Faroe Islanders have always eaten what nature could provide, proud to put local food on the table. The land yields little, so they have always relied on harvesting their seas. Hunting whales and seabirds kept them alive for generations, and gave them the way of life they love; a life they would pass on to their children. But today they face a grave threat to this tradition.
It is not the controversy surrounding whaling that threatens the Faroese way of life; the danger is coming from the whales themselves. The Faroese are among the first to feel the affects of our ever more polluted oceans. They have discovered that their beloved whales are toxic, contaminated by the outside world. What once secured their survival now endangers their children and the Faroe Islanders must make a choice between health and tradition.
The Hollywood Reporter
"An ethnographic doc with plenty of room for artful filmmaking, Mike Day’s sometimes breath-catchingly beautiful The Islands and the Whales takes moviegoers to the remote Faroe Islands, which sit between Iceland and Scotland. "
One Room with a view
"The film’s serenely gorgeous cinematography lets the Faroe Islands speak for themselves, deftly presenting a place of staggering natural beauty which belies the cultural turmoil it will uncover."
The Ecologist
"The Islands and the Whales provides a gentle insight into how an intelligent, compassionate community with a strong identity based on traditions of bird and whale hunting struggles to deal with the shock of the new. Slowly, it becomes clear that their fate is also our fate, in microcosm. "
