OVERVIEW
On the Faroe Islands, there are no tall trees, only mountains, fog, and cold water. That is all Baldur (Egor Venned) has ever known. It is 1862, and the young fisherman starts his days early, prays with his widowed mother Ásla (Sofia Nolsøe Mikkelsen), then rows out into the colorless sea to fish. It all changes when he sets out to rescue Helge (Pilou Asbæk), a whaler from the outside world, but wrecks his boat on the way. Helge helps him repair it, and the two men form a deep bond, one that survives even as Helge apparently leaves the island, and one that Ásla and the devout village around her come to read as evil.
BACKGROUND
The film adapts the short story ‘Manor’, published in 1884 by German writer Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, one of the first men in Europe to defend love between men in print and in public. Kasper Kalle identified with the material, having grown up in a small town where “being gay was about the worst thing you could be,” an isolation he has compared to living on a remote island. He built his first full feature out of that memory, with SF Studios (the largest production house in the Nordics) financing a period vampire romance in Faroese and Danish, shot on location in the Faroes in the summer of 2024, with Egor Venned, a Faroese model who had never acted, in the lead. The film had its world premiere at Fantasia’s 30th edition, where Kalle received Best Director and Asbæk the Outstanding Performance award.
THE REVIEW
More than anything, the film marks Kasper ‘Kalle’ Skovsbøl as a director to watch, particularly for how he builds and holds a mood. Danish cinematographer Jacob Møller makes the most of the gray setting and the fog, and the sound design keeps the sea inside the house, so that even in the closed rooms of the cottage the coast is still there under the dialogue and you feel the moisture in the air. The score, by the Faroese duo Hettarher (Torleik Mortensen and Andreas Tyekjær Restorff), completes the world with wordless voices mixed at about the level of the weather, human sound arriving from the same place as the water. Taken together, it all makes the film feel grand, and it is the perfect setting for a forbidden romance.
That is how the first hour goes, in glances rather than statements. Baldur looks at a shirtless Helge, who notices immediately what the boy is thinking, and Ásla, watching both of them, sees in Helge a replacement for her dead husband. The game of glances is exquisite, especially in a dinner scene where the two men answer Ásla’s questions and talk to each other at the same time, one conversation out loud and another one in looks. In a short amount of time, we buy the romance and how deep it runs for both of them.
It is easier to capture the feeling of a first love in naive Baldur, who keeps probing Helge with curious questions about the outside world, and Venned, even if a little stiff at times, fits the part. The tougher act is convincing us of Helge’s affection, since he is the older man with somewhere else to be, and Pilou Asbæk pulls it off remarkably well. A scene in which he gives Baldur a gift finally reveals that he, too, fell in love and adds a new dimension to a character who has probably spent a lifetime running.
While mostly playing the romance straight, Kalle reminds us here and there that this is a genre film, with fake-out nightmares and small scares. The real turn arrives at the midpoint, when Helge boards a ship to leave the island. I will not spoil what happens, and the official logline already calls this a vampire film. To the film’s credit, the genre does not go where you expect, and its use certainly subverts expectations, sometimes not for the best.
From there, the vampire metaphor takes center stage, and the film shifts its attention from Baldur and Helge’s relationship to the villagers’ increasingly hostile view of it, something only lightly established during the first hour. As a result, the transition never feels entirely organic. Characters become less cohesive as well, particularly Ásla, whose resistance to Baldur leaving with Helge initially seems rooted more in loneliness than in religious conviction, making her later transformation feel abrupt and unsatisfactory.
There is still real artistry in the second half, and some of the film’s strongest images arrive late. Two possession scenes are genuinely frightening and among its most memorable moments, especially one in which the make-up effects briefly reveal a face emerging from the middle of a body. The vampire attack itself is equally striking, and so is the haunting final shot. Yet these moments never carry the emotional force they could have had because the screenplay gradually drifts away from Baldur, whose perspective gave the first hour both its intimacy and its power.
FINAL THOUGHTS
No Rest for the Wicked is undoubtedly one of the directorial highlights of Fantasia 2026, at times frightening and oppressive, but most of all tender and deeply emotional. Kasper Kalle announces himself as a filmmaker with remarkable confidence, creating an atmosphere that is both immersive and emotionally rich. While the vampire metaphor introduces compelling ideas and some unforgettable imagery, it ultimately pulls the film away from the intimate love story that made its opening so captivating. The result is a film with a remarkable first hour and flashes of greatness throughout the second, one that falls just short of becoming as unforgettable as its finest moments.
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- Where to watch
- Coming soon
- Where to watch
- Coming soon
Play trailer
- Original title
- No Rest for the Wicked
- Director
- Kasper 'Kalle' Skovsbøl
- Cast
- Egor Venned, Pilou Asbæk, Sofia Nolsøe Mikkelsen, Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson, Kjartan Hansen, Búi Dam, Nicolaj Falck
- Screenwriter
- Rasmus Birch
- Composer
- Torleik Mortensen, Andreas Tyekjær Restorff
- Cinematography
- Jacob Møller
- Editor
- Mads Michael Olsen, Mark Bukdahl
- Country
Faeroe Islands
- Language
- Danish