Chances are you’ll know Greenland largely from U.S. President Trump’s aim of taking management of the island, which is an autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark. However the world’s largest island additionally has its personal tales to inform, and a few should not simply native however common.
Living proof: the documentary Partitions – Akinni Inuk. Two sturdy Greenlandic girls are united by traumatic pasts and a chaotic current, though one lives behind bars, whereas the opposite retains her vulnerability behind a cool facade. The doc takes viewers not solely nearer to them, however inside their hearts and minds. A synopsis of the movie guarantees “a shifting journey for justice, freedom, and a second likelihood at life.” Colonialism’s lasting chokehold additionally performs a key position.
The “akinni inuk” a part of the title additionally hints at the truth that there may be extra at play right here than first meets the attention. In any case, the phrase interprets to “the human being in entrance of me.”
Partitions, from administrators Sofie Rørdam and Nina Paninnguaq Skydsbjerg, the latter being the lady within the movie who doesn’t stay behind bars, and producer Emile Hertling Péronard through his Ánorâk Movie, can also be uncommon in one other approach. It’s Greenland’s submission for the 2026 Oscars finest worldwide characteristic movie class, marking solely the third movie that Greenland has ever despatched to the Academy Awards after Torben Bech and Otto Rosing’s 2010 drama Nuummioq and Mike Magidson’s 2012 movie Inuk.
The movie got here collectively in an eight-year journey that Danish artistic Rørdam and Greenlandic filmmaker Skydsbjerg launched into. It begins off with autobiographical footage filmed by inmates of a jail in Greenland’s capital and largest metropolis, Nuuk, earlier than evolving right into a portrait of Ruth, who has spent 12 years in indefinite detention and is trapped in authorized limbo between Greenland and Denmark, and her evolving friendship with filmmaker Nina.
THR talked to Rørdam and Skydsbjerg, who made her characteristic directorial debut with Partitions, in regards to the movie and its lengthy journey.
The 2 began out by letting inmates movie themselves to inform their tales. However sooner or later, officers determined that inmates’ use of cameras was a safety threat. That compelled the artistic workforce to determine if and how one can proceed. “We felt we had a whole lot of footage, however no clear story,” Rørdam tells THR. “We additionally felt there was an untold story about Ruth, Ruth’s case, and the way she was in between the Danish and the Greenlandic system and simply appeared caught.” The filmmaker additionally received entry to all her case information which might be in Danish, the authorized language of Greenland, which noticed her collaboration with Skydsbjerg repay some extra.
Skydsbjerg beloved how her Danish co-director, who has additionally completed a whole lot of humanitarian work, approached her about teaming up for the doc. “I used to be fairly bored with different folks telling our tales,” she remembers, telling THR: “What Sofie wrote to me in her e mail made me actually pleased with the place I used to be born and the tradition I’m dwelling in. She was speaking about Greenlandic folks as visionary concerning how we deal with inmates and was focused on how the correctional facility really works, with extra of a give attention to rehabilitation and resocialization. It was essential to her to all the time maintain the human within the heart, so it felt like a special venture simply from studying how heartfelt and heat her method was, and in addition how curious she was. I actually favored her humanistic method.”
Ultimately, Skydsbjerg made herself susceptible within the technique of diving deeper into Ruth’s story to the purpose the place the filmmaker grew to become a key a part of the story unfolding on-screen herself. “I ended up [wearing] two hats. Sure, I’m one of many administrators, however I’m additionally in it,” sharing her personal traumatic previous and dealing to maneuver past it, she highlights. “However I’m not a ‘character.’ Once we have been in post-production, we have been speaking about ‘the character Nina.’ However I used to be like, ‘I can’t distance myself from the movie’.”
Or, as Rørdam describes it: “Nina began to offer increasingly more of herself when sitting in entrance of Ruth, somebody whom she actually mirrored. And slowly, you would see one thing else was occurring and growing. And there was a degree the place I spotted that this was the movie. I in all probability knew it a lot sooner than Nina.”
Skydsbjerg emphasizes that “it was by no means a acutely aware determination to leap in entrance of the digital camera and a plan to be within the movie.” It merely developed that approach in an natural approach. “In some unspecified time in the future, Ruth and I grew to become shut,” she remembers. “And at any time when she would inform me mainly the whole lot, as you do with your pals while you share one thing from your individual life, it felt unsuitable simply to say ‘inform me the whole lot in [traditional] interview fashion.’ It grew to become extra like a documented dialog between two folks.”
Ruth’s perspective additionally made that the pure approach. “She would inform me one thing after which ask about me,” the filmmaker remembers. “She was inviting me into the dialog, and he or she was very interested in me. Generally I even felt like she was seeing via me.”
Partitions grew to become a movie about two girls, their traumas, and massive themes of life and connection. “We made a movie about freedom from, very actually, a jail. However it’s additionally about freedom extra typically, freedom from a colonial system. Freedom can have many varieties,” Rørdam explains, including that she discovered the Greenlandic system much less progressive than hoped when she skilled it up shut. “It’s a common story instructed via an individual’s lived life, but it surely’s additionally actually a narrative in regards to the therapeutic powers of friendship.”
Consistent with that, the visible and broader storytelling method stays away from all these true-crime tropes audiences are accustomed to. “It was a really acutely aware selection to not make a typical jail movie the place you make use of all the weather, resembling scary music and, ‘oh, we’ve got a assassin,’” she highlights. “It’s nearly human beings.”
Skydsbjerg’s lauds her co-director, saying: “I felt I couldn’t edit myself. I needed to take out so lots of the scenes which might be really within the movie. You don’t need folks to see you want that, however on the similar time, it’s probably the most genuine [portrayal]. So, Sofie did an awesome job. And in a approach, the expertise additionally modified my vainness.”
Skydsbjerg’s expertise on Partitions even “completely modified my entire standpoint on what we ask folks to do in entrance of a digital camera, particularly in documentaries, and the way insanely tough it’s to speak about one thing that hurts you,” she shares with THR. “Most frequently, we give attention to trauma in documentaries. I’ve enormous respect, not just for Ruth, however for everybody who ever went in entrance of a digital camera.” That mentioned, “with Ruth, we have been leaning towards one another so many occasions, and we completely forgot there was a digital camera. I didn’t really feel susceptible and even barely uncomfortable till we went into post-production, when the story turned that approach.”
Ruth and her stay greater than pals. “She’s household,” Skydsbjerg tells THR. And he or she hopes the movie’s submission to the Oscars will get Greenland, its folks, and their tales some much-deserved consideration past headlines about U.S. and Danish politicians arguing about it.
“For my folks to be acknowledged is nice,” she concludes. “What’s much more necessary for me is that the younger folks and children in Greenland will see this and see somebody like Ruth and me rise to one thing like that. I hope it’s going to carry mild and hope, additionally for the remainder of the world. Yeah, it’s an enormous honor, and it’s tough to search out the fitting phrases. However it’s additionally a lot greater than that. Even small nations can have huge goals.”
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