28/07/2026 - Kasper Kalle's feature follows a forbidden romance in the Faroe Islands, where love defies religious tradition and death through haunting folk horror

Selected for the Cheval Noir competition at the Fantasia International Film Festival, where it won Best Director, No Rest for the Wicked is adapted from Manor, an 1884 short story by German author Karl Heinrich Ulrichs. Directed by Kasper Kalle, the film was shot in the Faroe Islands and includes dialogue in both Faroese and Danish.

Baldur (Egor Venned), a young fisherman left as the sole provider for his mother, Alsa (Sofia Nolsøe Mikkelsen), after his father's early death, lives a quiet life shaped by his parents' expectations and the confines of his remote island home. When Helge (Pilou Asbæk), a charming drifter and whaler who finds himself stranded on the island, breaks into their quiet lives, things begin to change for the pair. As their relationship develops in secret, Baldur's duty to his family and the island's rigid Christian values threaten to tear them apart. When tragedy strikes, he sets out to prove that his love for Helge can transcend both religious dogma and, if necessary, death itself.

Jacob Møller's cinematography makes for a visually pleasant portrait, enriched by Sabine Hviid's thoughtful production design. The starting elements of No Rest for the Wicked are not particularly new or original, but it is the combination of these elements that makes the story compelling. The casting choices also prove inspired, pairing an experienced actor like Pilou Asbæk with newcomer Egor Venned. The tension between the two is palpable, and together they deliver an explosively sensual performance, complemented by Sofia Nolsøe Mikkelsen's measured and heartbreaking portrayal of a mother who would go to any lengths for her son, yet who also longs for physical intimacy herself. In fact, the line between a mother's instinct to protect – entirely normal – and the envy she feels towards the unbreakable bond between her son and his lover is very thin, and it is portrayed with remarkable subtlety in both the writing and the performances.

The elements of folk horror transform the story into a supernatural tale of love, featuring haunting spirits and the idea that love itself can transcend the laws of the natural world. In this sense, the film will satisfy fans of stories such as Wuthering Heights, where supernatural elements play a central role in the romance, as well as enthusiasts of historical dramas, particularly those set in lesser-known regions of the world, as the setting is arguably the adaptation's most refreshing and distinctive feature.

It seems that the film draws on the Romantic concept of the sublime, a central aesthetic idea explored by poets such as William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Percy Bysshe Shelley, for whom nature was both awe-inspiring and terrifying, capable of exceeding human understanding and control. Drawing from this concept, Kalle's second feature is a blend of different genres and inspirations that come together seamlessly, appealing to a wide audience while offering a fresh approach to vampire cinema and proving that the genre still has room for reinvention.

No Rest for the Wicked is produced by Denmark’s SF Studios, Faroe Islands’ Outlier Projects and Iceland’s Truenorth. Charades handles international sales.