Qivitoq

The young teacher Eva Nygaard travels from Denmark to Greenland to surprise the man she is engaged to. Doctor Erik Halsøe has not waited for her; he is about to marry the nurse who assists him. Eva goes to a small fishing village to wait for the next ship back to Denmark. There she meets Jens, a quiet, moody Dane who runs the outpost of a trading company. A tense relation begins between them that often turns into open conflict. Meanwhile Jens is trying to persuade a Greenlander named Pavia to fish for the company. Pavia fears both cutting himself off from his fellow villagers and offending the spirit called Qivitoq. The film tells the tension between a settled life and an order arriving from outside. Poul Reichhardt and Astrid Villaume appear in Erik Balling’s hundred and nineteen minute Danish film, completed in 1956.