Angunnguaq Larsen is busy setting up the sound equipment for the Aasapalaaq Festival, one of the leading cultural events of the summer here in Nuuk, Greenland’s capital. It’s late August, and Greenlanders know to take advantage of a sunny day before the weather becomes unbearable. Local groups sell hot chocolate, coffee, and tea. Kids play around Aqqaluk Square while grandparents sit on folding chairs.
Family entertainment starts in the morning, with some smaller acts taking over the afternoon. As the sun sets, legendary singer-songwriter Rasmus Lyberth takes the stage with his guitar. When his raspy voice reaches the high notes of “Nipaannerup Anersaava (The Spirit of Silence)”, a teary-eyed crowd joins in. Lyberth is a source of national pride, one of the few local musicians whose fame has spread beyond the island.
In between songs, people keep approaching Larsen, who is also a local celebrity. Despite regularly working as a sound technician and music professor, he has starred in some of Greenland’s most famous movies. In 2009, he appeared in Nuummioq, a story about a construction worker who finds love right when he gets diagnosed with cancer, considered to be the first feature film entirely produced in Greenland. He is also the go-to Inuit actor for international productions. Just recently, he starred in the fourth season of True Detective, Netflix’s Thin Ice, and, before that, he played Greenland’s mysterious prime minister in the hit Danish TV show Borgen.
- Actor Angunnguaq Larsen in front of Katuaq, Nuuk’s cultural center, where he often works as a sound technician, on Aug. 21, 2025.
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A man with a guitar opens his mouth and closes his eyes as he sings in front of a microphone on a stage. - Musician Rasmus Lyberth performs at the Asarpalaaq Festival in Nuuk on Aug. 23, 2025. Pau Torres Pagès for Foreign Policy
Angunnguaq is an award-winning international star, but he cannot yet make a living solely from his acting. Greenlandic local films are scarce and international productions only turn to him for the limited Arctic Indigenous roles. “If I had blue eyes and blond hair, I would work all the time,” he told Foreign Policy, only half-jokingly. “It takes time, but in 10 years, I hope there is a film industry here.”
Greenland is an autonomous territory in the Kingdom of Denmark, and over 80 percent of Greenlanders support the island’s independence. An even higher percentage are opposed to any talk of a U.S. takeover. In this context, cinema is seen as a tool to represent the island’s identity and aspirations, both at home and abroad. For too long, Greenlandic stories have been told by foreign filmmakers, often focusing on problems like alcoholism, depression, or suicide. Now, a new community of artists is trying to reclaim their own voice—and help chart their own political future.
Ruth, who at the beginning of Walls – Akinni Inuk had served nine years of an indefinite preventive detention sentence, stands behind a fence in Nuuk’s prison. Sofie Rørdam/courtesy of Anorak Film
For now, most Greenlandic filmmakers prefer to talk about a “film community” rather than a “film industry,” highlighting the importance that amateur projects have had on the island. Still, professionalization is no longer a far-fetched dream.
In January, a new film institute is set to start operations and many hope it will be a much-needed step towards professionalization. And for the third time ever and the first since 2012, Greenland submitted a film for consideration in the 2026 Oscars’ Best International Film category.
“Denmark has a long history in cinema of making films in Greenland, but never by Greenlandic filmmakers,” said Emile Hertling Péronard, who has spent the past decade trying to produce and export local stories. “It was always super difficult for us to get even distribution or anything else in Denmark; there simply wasn’t an interest.” In the early 2010s, there was a push from the film community that led to two submissions at the Oscars, but the momentum later died down. With roughly 57,000 inhabitants, the island is the least populated territory to submit a film to this year’s Oscars, by far.
Péronard is part of the production team behind the film selected to represent the country at the Academy Awards this year. Walls – Akinni Inuk is a documentary filmed over eight years that portrays the lonely life of a woman indefinitely incarcerated in Nuuk. Co-directed by Sofie Rordam, who is Danish, and Greenlander Nina Paninnguaq Skydsbjerg, the deeply personal feature finally fulfilled the requirements. According to the Greenland Oscar Committee, a film is considered Greenlandic if a person or entity responsible for more than half of its production duties is based in Greenland or has a strong family connection with the island.
In a context where collaboration between Greenlanders and Danes has often been the norm, the lines can get blurry. With a small community of film professionals, it is common for crews to require Danish talent or production. To this day, the film community is divided on what makes for a Greenlandic film. The current rule would exclude, for example, a feature directed, written, and starring Greenlanders if the producers were Danish.
Even more established minority cinemas have not settled the dilemma in their respective regional awards. In Catalonia, the origin of the production company is not enough; a point system decides whether there is enough local talent involved. In Quebec, a three-tier system based on the origins of the cast and crew defines who is eligible for what category.
“For the last three years, we have had an Oscar committee,” said Klaus Georg Hansen, head of the filmmakers’ organization Film.GL. “But in the first two, we did not have a film.” Even though this year’s entry didn’t make it to the shortlist preselection rounds, just submitting is considered a local victory. Now, with an increasing global sensibility toward Indigenous voices and since Donald Trump has put the island in global headlines, Hansen and Péronard think that greater interest could lead to more international funding.
A waterfall in Nuup Kangerlua (Nuuk Fjord) on Aug. 26, 2025. Pau Torres Pagès for Foreign Policy
In February 2025, the release of another documentary was received as a bombshell both in Denmark and on the island, particularly as it arrived right before Greenland’s elections. Broadcast by the Danish public-service station, White Gold of Greenland claimed that the extraction of cryolite, a rare mineral mined in the southern tip of the island between 1854 and 1987, generated 400 billion Danish kroner ($62 billion), in today’s value, for the Danish-led operation. At a time when many Danes argue that Greenland has long been a burden on Danish public finances, the film offered an alternative narrative of European exploitation.
Many politicians and economists in Denmark claimed that the figure was misleading, as it referred to the operation’s revenue before accounting for its costs, rather than the actual profit. But the filmmakers stood by the calculations. They argued that, in a colonial setting, Denmark benefited not only from the company’s direct profits but also its expenditures, which went toward employing Danish nationals or using Danish-built ships to transport the mineral.
DR, the Danish broadcaster, also initially stood behind the documentary before ultimately deciding to take it down from its website. The dispute reportedly led to the forced resignation of the broadcaster’s news editor-in-chief, Thomas Falbe. In Greenland, the controversy was received as yet another denial of Denmark’s lasting colonial legacy at a time when the United States was making clear its intentions to acquire the island.
White Gold of Greenland and the story of its release help demonstrate the political stakes of domestic film. Anders Gronlund, a postdoctoral fellow at Lund University who wrote his dissertation on Greenlandic cinema, calls the process of reclaiming storytelling “narrative sovereignty.” In this way, cinema is inextricably linked to the island’s drive for greater political self-determination.
The movement is in part inspired by the Sami people’s achievements in telling their own stories. In 2009, the Indigenous community that stretches over the north of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia, set up a film institute with the financial support of the Norwegian government. Since then, it has managed to break into the mainstream of the film sector, screening films in European festivals and setting up a creative lab with Netflix. Each year, the institute supports a dozen Sami productions at any stage of the development process, from scriptwriting to distribution. It even has its own streaming service, Sapmifilm.
Otto Rosing, who directed Nuummioq, was motivated to show the life he knew in Greenland and avoid a stereotypical representation that had become the norm in onscreen portrayals. “It is not a story of sexual immorality, murder, and arson, nor is it the beautiful hunter on the ice. It is a story somewhere in between,” he told Kosmorama magazine.
His movie, a dramedy about a group of friends who must face the serious illness of one of them, is a break from previous cinema about the island. The protagonists shoot a commercial in English, drink at loud bars, eat Thai food, and buy palm trees. The academic Kirsten Thisted has called it an early example of the idea of the “cosmopolitan Inuit.” Rosing shows Greenlanders fully embracing modernity instead of suffering from it. “You don’t see this notion of the vibrant modern Greenland in documentaries or earlier films,” says Gronlund. For him, it also sets Greenlandic cinema apart from other Indigenous film industries that have a greater 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 Foreign Policy
The full deployment of the new Greenlandic Film Institute this month is set to pick up the work that Hansen, Péronard, and others have been doing voluntarily and formalize it with a budget, a small team, and an already-appointed board.
After the establishment of the self-rule government in 1979, cultural policy became a competence of local authorities. Since then, Greenlandic productions have been excluded from many of the Danish Film Institute’s funding opportunities, severely reducing budgets. The Greenlandic Film Institute will now have the responsibility to start a fund to finance Greenlandic productions, in line with the standard in many European countries. The amount of money allocated to the fund remains unclear, given that the Greenlandic government recently announced sweeping national budget cuts.
The institute will also be tasked with promoting the island as a location destination for films, which could help stimulate economic growth. In early December, filmmaker Klaus Georg Hansen flew to London to attend one of the biggest film location gatherings in Europe, Focus 2025. It was the fifth year Film.GL was promoting Greenland’s landscapes, a role that will presumably be picked up by a new film commissioner this year, once the position is filled.
At the very least, Film.GL wants international movies portraying Greenland to film those sequences in the island. They are committed to the principle of “nothing about us without us.” “It’s not always only about being the one telling the stories,” researcher Gronlund told Foreign Policy. “But also having some sort of agency in what other people are telling, getting a seat at the table.”
In recent years, several international productions depicting Greenland have actually found the glacial scenery elsewhere. In Ben Stiller’s The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, scenes meant to take place in Nuuk were filmed in the Icelandic fishing town of Stykkisholmur. In Ric Roman Waugh’s action blockbuster Greenland, the film crew never set foot on the titular island.
In the film industry, shooting in a location different that’s not the territory portrayed is a common practice. Still, Greenlanders would like international filmmakers who want to talk about the island to go and film there. That would provide an opportunity boost for local talent and other sectors, like transportation and catering. But the reasons go beyond the money. “In a post-colonial context, much more emotion and feelings are connected to land and representation,” said Grolund.
As the institute is set to start operations and the world continues discussing the future of the island, many in the film community feel that the stakes are now higher than ever. There is pressure to deliver. “We are building a nation,” said Péronard. “The stories that we get to tell are very much part of that shaping.”
