I recently had the opportunity to speak to the director of the superb film The Last Paradise on Earth, Sakaris Stórá from the Faroe islands, whose film played in the recent Scandinavian Film Festival. We discussed why he made this film, some of the technical choices, as well the powerful use of sound in the film – Billy Newbery
Billy
I want to start with why was this story in particular important to you?
Sakaris Stórá
Well, the idea came from my years working in a fish factory like the main character. Like him, I lived most of my life in my hometown. I felt that there was something interesting about that environment and that culture that hasn’t really been portrayed on film in the way that I wanted it to. I also think it’s very interesting what is happening between us humans when the whole world is changing. These were the driving forces in the writing of a story in which a brother and a sister have to bind together and acknowledge each one another.
Billy
This film does something quite powerful in deciding to make the character very passive. Which is very much against the common wisdom. How did you manage to do this while still keeping it interesting to watch?
Sakaris Stórá
It was a huge balancing act. It’s very hard to tell a story that is so small. For example, spoiler alert, the film starts with the brother (the lead) coming home and the dishes haven’t been done and then the film ends with the two siblings doing the dishes together. The story is that simple in a way. It’s a very small story that gives room for the themes that are around it. I think those themes are what makes the characters work, even if the lead is very passive.
Billy
On that point as well, the lead’s performance is also very passive giving only small subtle expressions, which works so well with his place in the story. How did you work with him to achieve that performance?
Sakaris Stórá
He’s just very talented and has a face for cinema. Casting here in the Faroe islands is not easy since we only have like 50,000 people and there are probably 70,000 people who speak the language worldwide. So it’s really hard to do castings as we don’t have that many actors. I did the castings pretty early working with them a lot. Even working with the actors on the script. We had them improvising scenes and then we would take the scenes back into the script to reshape them. It really came from the small emotions of the (actors) really living in the text.
It was so nice to see how the actors were evolving throughout the process. I felt, even though we were unsure if we would get finance, that this process and how much the actors grew was a small success story anyways.
Billy
The film is a refreshingly short one, only about 80 minutes which doesn’t seem all that common these days. Was this always the plan or did you have to leave a lot of scenes on the cutting room floor?
Sakaris Stórá
There are a few scenes that are cut but not that many. Though a lot of scenes are shortened by cutting as much of the dialogue as possible. Just like we did in the writing, in every step, rehearsals, shooting and editing we tried to reduce the dialogue. Even when we were mixing the sound I was removing some lines. If you could feel it then you don’t have to say it.
Billy
I was really affected by how effectively you used the locations in this film. Each space very quickly becomes a character be it the factory, house or the island itself with its natural beauty. All wordlessly conveying so much to each scene. Why did you find it so important to focus on these spaces even though the film is so short?
Sakaris Stórá
It was important because the main character is so connected to these places. So the (audience) have to also feel just as connected to all the locations as him, especially his home and the factory. We shot everything on location in a town so all the locations were within walking distance from each other. That was what brought on the nature shots (following our characters as they travel to each place). A lot of people have talked about how beautiful nature is in that film which was very funny to me because I try to avoid nature as much as possible. Otherwise it becomes like this exotic thing, this beautiful thing (just to look at). So we had this rule that all the nature shots had to be real in a way, that they lived in the story by living in the location.
Billy
I love that because it adds to the empathetic nature of the film. A feature which is best demonstrated through the heavy grief filled tone the film has throughout. A tone which lingers heavily in every scene, allowing the viewer to feel that burden and pain of a trauma unresolved, forever on your shoulders just like our lead is feeling. How did you achieve this powerful empathic feeling?
Sakaris Stórá
It’s kind of hard to point out what it is because it comes from working very closely with both the actors and the creative heads on the film. They really understood the story very well, so that feeling lives in the cinematography and very much in the sound, it lives in the whole setup.
Originally I wanted to work in sound but I didn’t get accepted at sound school and instead I started to direct films. So sound was something that I was very conscious about all the time. There’s so much going on in the sound side of that film that’s very subtle. And I think that really helps create this pressing sense of an absence. It was suggested that we should have a picture of the mother on the wall in the home. Which we don’t do because I wanted her to just exist as this hole that was left in the home.
Billy
The house especially has an almost violent nature to its quietness. Was that something that came together in post? Or with your connection to sound did you start planning the sound during the writing process?
Sakaris Stórá
Yes, I thought a lot about sound as I wrote it, I had a lot of conversations with the sound guy when we were on location together. It’s very funny because in that house, almost everything you hear is the on-location sound. We added some exterior sounds and of course some foley but that is it. Everything had this atmosphere that just connected with the film so well.
Billy
I want to quickly pivot here, at the end, to ask about the islands themselves, since there’s so much in this film about this small fish factory shutting down. I wanted to know a little context. Is this something that’s happening a lot and what is the cause for factories like this closing in Faroe? Is it only climate change or is it something else?
Sakaris Stórá
There’s a lot of contributing factors, (one being) the climate. There’s a scene where someone goes out to catch birds and they don’t get many birds. When I was working on that scene a day later I met a friend who was doing the same thing, catching birds, and it was almost the exact same as the scene, the dialogue was almost word for word. So climate (change) is definitely part of it. These factory closures are happening all around the world, it’s very much a global issue. The small factories are shutting down as things get more centralised as big companies run everything. These people who actually live in these (communities) lose their livelihood and homes (when the towns die). That’s like the global part of the story I think.
Billy
One last question which we often ask in this magazine. What films have inspired you when you were younger or even to make this film?
Sakaris Stórá
It’s a tricky question for this film as it was very different in different parts of the process. It was very much inspired by Scandinavian cinema of course, Lucas Möttesson, a Swedish director and well as Deborah Gramnick who did Winter’s Bone. She’s a huge influence too.
The Last Paradise on Earth screens as part of the 2025 Hurtigruten Scandinavian Film Festival