Nuummioq

Director: Torben Bech, Otto Rosing
Screenwriters: Torben Bech

Institute History

  • 2010 Sundance Film Festival

Description

The most ambitious film ever to emerge from Greenland, and the first Greenland/Inuit–produced feature, Nuummioq tells the story of a young man’s odyssey from mundane existence into an acute sense of the sacred. Like most regular guys in the tiny capital city, Malik works, cavorts with buddies, and fools around—toggling between Danish and Kalaallisut languages. All at once, when he discovers he’s very ill, mortality intrudes. Keeping the news to himself, Malik accompanies his cousin on a boat trip. What begins as an unremarkable outing becomes a transcendent journey at the edge of the world as he grapples with his elusive past and tunes into the present.

So breathtaking and luminous is Nuummioq’s landscape that you can almost feel the brisk air oxygenating your lungs. The tender play of shadow and light on the characters’ faces seems to suggest that we're only a flicker in nature’s vast radiance; but during our short time here, there’s family, tradition, and maybe even love.

— Caroline Libresco

Screening Details

  • Section: World Cinema Dramatic Competition
  • Film Type: Dramatic Feature
  • Country: Greenland
  • Language: Danish and Inuit
  • Run Time: 95 min.
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