You may know Greenland mostly from U.S. President Trump’s goal of taking control of the island, which is an autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark. But the world’s largest island also has its own stories to tell, and some are not just local but universal.

Case in point: the documentary Walls – Akinni Inuk. Two strong Greenlandic women are united by traumatic pasts and a chaotic present, even though one lives behind bars, while the other keeps her vulnerability behind a cool facade. The doc takes viewers not only closer to them, but inside their hearts and minds. A synopsis of the film promises “a moving journey for justice, freedom, and a second chance at life.” Colonialism’s lasting chokehold also plays a key role.

The “akinni inuk” part of the title also hints at the fact that there is more at play here than first meets the eye. After all, the phrase translates to “the human being in front of me.”

Walls, from directors Sofie Rørdam and Nina Paninnguaq Skydsbjerg, the latter being the woman in the film who does not live behind bars, and producer Emile Hertling Péronard via his Ánorâk Film, is also unusual in another way. It is Greenland’s submission for the 2026 Oscars best international feature film category, marking only the third film that Greenland has ever sent to the Academy Awards after Torben Bech and Otto Rosing’s 2010 drama Nuummioq and Mike Magidson’s 2012 film Inuk.

The film came together in an eight-year journey that Danish creative Rørdam and Greenlandic filmmaker Skydsbjerg embarked on. It starts off with autobiographical footage filmed by inmates of a prison in Greenland’s capital and largest city, Nuuk, before evolving into a portrait of Ruth, who has spent 12 years in indefinite detention and is trapped in legal limbo between Greenland and Denmark, and her evolving friendship with filmmaker Nina.

THR talked to Rørdam and Skydsbjerg, who made her feature directorial debut with Walls, about the film and its long journey.

The two started out by letting inmates film themselves to tell their stories. But one day, officials decided that inmates’ use of cameras was a security risk. That forced the creative team to figure out if and how to proceed. “We felt we had a lot of footage, but no clear story,” Rørdam tells THR. “We also felt there was an untold story about Ruth, Ruth’s case, and how she was in between the Danish and the Greenlandic system and just seemed stuck.” The filmmaker also got access to all her case files that are in Danish, the legal language of Greenland, which saw her collaboration with Skydsbjerg pay off some more.

Skydsbjerg loved how her Danish co-director, who has also done a lot of humanitarian work, approached her about teaming up for the doc. “I was quite tired of other people telling our stories,” she recalls, telling THR: “What Sofie wrote to me in her email made me really proud of where I was born and the culture I’m living in. She was talking about Greenlandic people as visionary regarding how we treat inmates and was interested in how the correctional facility actually works, with more of a focus on rehabilitation and resocialization. It was very important to her to always keep the human in the center, so it felt like a different project just from reading how heartfelt and warm her approach was, and also how curious she was. I really liked her humanistic approach.”

In the end, Skydsbjerg made herself vulnerable in the process of diving deeper into Ruth’s story to the point where the filmmaker became a key part of the story unfolding on-screen herself. “I ended up [wearing] two hats. Yes, I’m one of the directors, but I’m also in it,” sharing her own traumatic past and working to move beyond it, she highlights. “But I am not a ‘character.’ When we were in post-production, we were talking about ‘the character Nina.’ But I was like, ‘I can’t distance myself from the film’.”

Or, as Rørdam describes it: “Nina started to give more and more of herself when sitting in front of Ruth, someone whom she really mirrored. And slowly, you could see something else was happening and developing. And there was a point where I realized that this was the film. I probably knew it much earlier than Nina.”

Skydsbjerg emphasizes that “it was never a conscious decision to jump in front of the camera and a plan to be in the film.” It simply developed that way in an organic way. “At some point, Ruth and I became close,” she recalls. “And whenever she would tell me basically everything, as you do with your friends when you share something from your own life, it felt wrong just to say ‘tell me everything in [traditional] interview style.’ It became more like a documented conversation between two people.”

Ruth’s attitude also made that the natural way. “She would tell me something and then ask about me,” the filmmaker recalls. “She was inviting me into the conversation, and she was very curious about me. Sometimes I even felt like she was seeing through me.”

Walls became a film about two women, their traumas, and big themes of life and connection. “We made a film about freedom from, very literally, a prison. But it’s also about freedom more generally, freedom from a colonial system. Freedom can have many forms,” Rørdam explains, adding that she found the Greenlandic system less progressive than hoped when she experienced it up close. “It’s a universal story told through a person’s lived life, but it’s also really a story about the healing powers of friendship.”

In line with that, the visual and broader storytelling approach stays away from all those true-crime tropes audiences are familiar with. “It was a very conscious choice not to make a typical prison film where you make use of all the elements, such as scary music and, ‘oh, we have a murderer,’” she highlights. “It’s just about human beings.”

Skydsbjerg’s lauds her co-director, saying: “I felt I couldn’t edit myself. I wanted to take out so many of the scenes that are actually in the film. You don’t want people to see you like that, but at the same time, it’s the most authentic [portrayal]. So, Sofie did a great job. And in a way, the experience also changed my vanity.”

Skydsbjerg’s experience on Walls even “totally changed my whole point of view on what we ask people to do in front of a camera, especially in documentaries, and how insanely difficult it is to talk about something that hurts you,” she shares with *THR. *“Most often, we focus on trauma in documentaries. I have huge respect, not only for Ruth, but for everyone who ever went in front of a camera.” That said, “with Ruth, we were leaning against each other so many times, and we totally forgot there was a camera. I didn’t feel vulnerable or even slightly uncomfortable until we went into post-production, when the story turned that way.”

Ruth and her remain more than friends. “She’s family,” Skydsbjerg tells THR. And she hopes the film’s submission to the Oscars will get Greenland, its people, and their stories some much-deserved attention beyond headlines about U.S. and Danish politicians arguing about it.

“For my people to be recognized is great,” she concludes. “What is even more important for me is that the young people and kids in Greenland will see this and see someone like Ruth and me rise to something like that. I hope it will bring light and hope, also for the rest of the world. Yeah, it’s a huge honor, and it’s difficult to find the right words. But it’s also so much bigger than that. Even small countries can have big dreams.”

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