A film review by Jamie Richardson

Director Anders Walter has made Ivalu into an emotional and tragic suspense thriller, the journey of a young innocent and naïve Greenland girl searching desperately for her sister Ivalu.

The film has been given a further dramatic edge with Rasmus Heise’s superb cinematography. The camera focuses on the Greenland landscape, the icy hills and the fjords. The contrast between the vivid colours and the bleak snow-clad wilderness accentuates the suspense in a peculiar way, in that the viewer unwittingly joins the desperate search and shares the heartache when every turn comes up empty.

The story, from the outset, takes a hypnotic hold on you and never allows you to look anywhere else; the wretchedness of man, upsetting to watch, yet a reality of life. Suffice it to say that the topic has been excellently cinematised. The talented actresses, Mila Heilmann Kreutzmann (Pipaluk) and Nivi Larsen (Ivalu), tell their individual stories with strength, conviction, and a sincerity that has audiences empathising with everything these young sisters experiences.

Walter creates a beautiful world based on a graphic novel (of the same name) by Morton Durr. Heise’s shots and scenes are, at times, direct reflections of the illustrations that are in this graphic novel. With skill and grace, they tell this story with a raw truthfulness that does not disappoint.