Cinema at Scandinavia House: Skàl

“A welcome lightness of touch” (ScreenDaily) — See Cecilie Debell and Maria Tórgarð’s film Skál (Faroe Islands/Denmark, 2021), a documentary about youth, religion and love on the Faroe Islands, at Scandinavia House!

21-year-old Dania, who grew up in a Christian community in the Faroe Islands’ Bible belt, has just moved to Tórshavn where she is seeing Trygvi, a hip-hop artist and poet locally known as Silvurdrongur (Silver Kid). He comes from a secular family, and writes poems and texts about the shadow sides of humanity; Dania herself sings in a Christian band, but is fascinated by Trygvi’s courage to write brutally honest lyrics. As she tries to find her place in the world and understand herself, she starts to write more personal texts, which develop into a collection of critical poems called Skál (Cheers) about the double life that she and other youths must live in the conservative Christian world: A world she does not want to abandon, but to change. Where do you draw your lines when you are young and Christian? Is it a sin to drink or dance? Is it a sin to have sex before marriage?

Is it a sin to have a boyfriend who is not a Christian? And how long can you endure living between two worlds?