From 9–11 October 2026, Scandinavia House presents a compact, compelling panorama of West Nordic cinema: stories of grief, endurance, identity and imagination, shown in the languages of the North with English subtitles.
A cinema shaped by sea, distance and belonging
New York’s Scandinavia House will turn its Victor Borge Hall into a meeting place for the North Atlantic from Friday 9 to Sunday 11 October, when West Nordic Film Days returns with films from Greenland, Iceland and the Faroe Islands. Curated by Birgir Thor Møller, the annual festival brings together recent feature films, documentaries, animation and short fiction in a programme that gives equal space to established filmmakers and emerging voices. These are not simply films set against spectacular northern landscapes: they are films made from within their communities, attentive to the realities of small places, changing economies, family ties, language and memory.
A Faroese opening night with a historic prize-winner
The festival opens at 7 pm on Friday with The Last Paradise on Earth (Seinasta paradís á jørð), Sakaris Stórá’s 2025 Faroese drama about Kári, a young man trying to remain rooted in his village as bereavement, economic uncertainty and departures reshape his world. The film’s quiet, emotionally precise portrait of island life became the first Faroese feature ever to win the Nordic Council Film Prize, an important landmark for a national cinema whose reach is rapidly growing. It is followed by Ninna Pálmadóttir’s Icelandic short Paperboy (Blaðberinn) and Lukáš Masner’s Greenlandic short The Price of a Story (Oqaluttuap Akia), which stages an encounter between a Czech visitor and an Inuit shaman against the long shadow of Greenland’s colonial past.
Greenlandic voices, Icelandic folklore and Faroese dark humour
Saturday’s first programme places the award-winning documentary Walls – Akinni Inuk at its centre. Directors Nina Paninnguaq Skydsbjerg and Sofie Rørdam follow the relationship between Ruth Mikaelsen Jerimiassen, a Greenlandic woman who has spent almost half her life in prison, and Nina, a filmmaker who initially enters her life to make a documentary; the resulting film offers a patient, unsensationalised view of incarceration, trauma and friendship. The session also includes Iceland’s folklore-inflected Sealskin (Selshamurinn) and Julia í Kálvalíð’s Faroese short Father, Oh Father (Faðir mín Faðir), in which a woman takes the remains of the biological father she never met on an unexpectedly tender and darkly comic journey through the islands.
Two generations of Faroese filmmaking
Later on Saturday, audiences can see Dreams by the Sea (Dreymar við havið), Sakaris Stórá’s 2017 coming-of-age drama, alongside Dawn (Dögun) and Arina Kleist’s The Last Grass Seamstress (Ivikkisartoq Kingulleq). Kleist’s documentary portrays Marie Josefsen, an 82-year-old Inuk from southern Greenland and the last surviving specialist in the traditional craft of grass sewing. Its presence gives the programme an especially resonant dimension: West Nordic cinema is not only looking outward for new audiences, but also recording the fragile knowledge, techniques and lived histories that might otherwise disappear.
A reflective closing on Sunday
The final programme begins on Sunday at 2 pm with The Ground Beneath Our Feet (Jörðin undir fótum okkar), Yrsa Roca Fannberg’s Icelandic documentary set inside Grund, Reykjavík’s oldest retirement home. Rather than reducing old age to decline, the film observes seasons, routine, humour and companionship with unusual warmth and attentiveness. It is paired with Maria Winther Olsen’s Faroese short Hold Me (Halt um meg), about two strangers searching for intimacy after a night out, and Greenlandic artist Alberte Parnuuna’s brief animated work Always Moving, a poetic reflection on restless thought and the modern fear of standing still.
Why West Nordic stories matter
For visitors in New York, West Nordic Film Days offers a rare opportunity to encounter cinema in Faroese, Kalaallisut and Icelandic on the big screen, with English subtitles making these intimate stories accessible without flattening their linguistic character. The festival also makes a persuasive case for looking beyond the familiar image of “Nordic cinema”: towards the North Atlantic, where smaller film industries are creating distinctive work from local experience while speaking to universal concerns. Individual tickets cost $13, or $8 for American-Scandinavian Foundation members; a festival pass costs $40, or $30 for members.
Practical information
West Nordic Film Days takes place at Scandinavia House, 58 Park Avenue, New York, from 9–11 October 2026. Friday’s opening screening begins at 7 pm; Saturday screenings begin at 2 pm and 5 pm; Sunday’s closing programme begins at 2 pm. Full programme details and tickets are available through Scandinavia House.
Suggested Online Sources
Scandinavia House: West Nordic Film Days 2026 | Scandinavia House: Opening Night programme | Nordic Council: The Last Paradise on Earth and the 2025 Film Prize | Reykjavík Grapevine: The Ground Beneath Our Feet
