Atlantic Rhapsody

80 minutesCountryFaroe IslandsLanguageFaroese

Atlantic Rhapsody is a 1989 Faroese documentary film by Katrin Ottarsdóttir. The original Faroese title is Atlantic Rhapsody - 52 myndir úr Tórshavn, where the second part means "52 pictures from Tórshavn". The film presents a day in the life of some inhabitants of Tórshavn, the capital of the Faroe Islands. The narrative is structured as a relay race, in which a person, a thing or something out of a scene brings the audience into another scene with new people and events. It is the first ever Faroese feature-length film.

A trip through 24 hours of the smallest capital in the world, Tórshavn, the film begins with a father and a daughter who are having breakfast when some fire trucks drive by. A woman and her child are looking at the fire and meet a married couple. The couple say hello to a man who is going out with his boat etc. Out of this emerges a kaleidoscopic story of both daily occurrences and dramatic situations, which in an entertaining and ironic way acts as a commentary on the Faroese, foreigners in the islands, as well as Faroese society in general.

Atlantic Rhapsody is the first feature film ever to be produced in the Faroes.^[1] It was created on a budget of 1.7 million DKR. The film was created in response to an announcement that a Nordic film festival was due to be held in the Faroe Islands, with the director arguing it would be appropriate to produce a Faroese film that could be shown at the festival.^[2]

A review in the New York Times described the film's depiction of Tórshavn as "at times mildly surprising [...] and well rounded as long as it sustains its ties with reality".^[1]

In 1989, the film received the prize of the Nordische Filminstitute at the film festival Nordische Filmtage in Lübeck.^[3]

• Official website
• Atlantic Rhapsody at IMDb