In Maniitsoq, Greenland, US aluminium giant Alcoa Corporation has been planning to build a smelting plant for years. Promising economic renewal for the region, the sense that the plant may never actually come to fruition is palpable throughout Winter’s Yearning. Following the lives of the area’s loyal ageing population and its stymied youth—in a place where employment opportunities are limited to fisheries—the contemporary colonial violence of Denmark is figured through stories of economic ruin, frustrated communities and shared national trauma. Pictured against immense, isolating landscapes, the people of Maniitsoq await their plant – and with it, Greenland’s possible first step towards sovereignty.

Screens with:
Disconnected
Alice Aedy | 2018 | UK | 14’

Against visions of British cities and faces illuminated by smartphones, anonymous voicemails from young people are left for the Minister of Loneliness. Through disarmingly honest testimonies, this abstract meditation explores the silent loneliness epidemic in the UK and explores a world in which we are ‘connected’, but more isolated than ever.

This is the UK Premiere

Followed by a Q&A with co-director Sidse Torstholm Lars

Read an essay on Winter’s Yearning by Miranda Mungai

“Sidse Torstholm Larsen (b.1981) has a Master degree in Visual Anthropology from the University of Tromsø and studied Inuit Culture in Greenland. Directed the short film Alianaak about a Greenlandic football team in Copenhagen. Winter’s Yearning is her feature film debut. Sturla Pilskog (b.1981) has a Master degree in Visual Anthropology from the University of Tromsø. His latest short documentary Ice Handscape is about Norwegian seal hunters in the Arctic. Winter’s Yearning is his feature film debut.”