Shadow Island (2 Stars)

This is the ninth film in the Stuttgart Nights Festival.

"Shadow Island" is a slow-moving mystery that takes place on a small island in the Barents Sea. David is a Swedish teenager who's about to begin a university course on Meteorology. This is the same subject that his father studied, but he can't ask him anything, because his father hanged himself 18 years ago. David finds notes about his father's research on a small Norwegian island, so he decides to spend a few weeks on the island in an abandoned lighthouse.

David is alone on the island, but he makes contact with a young woman who lives alone in a lighthouse on a neighbouring island. It's a strange place for a woman to live alone, but the lighthouse has belonged to her family for over 200 years, and she can't bear to move out.

Supposedly they're the only two people on the two islands, but they spot people walking around at night.

It's a typical Nordic noir film. Even the director admitted this in his introduction. I personally found it too slow, especially in contrast to "Sakra" immediately before. I was also annoyed by the anti-NATO messages. The director said that he began making the film in 2019, three years before Putin's invasion of Ukraine, but it still grates alongside Putin using NATO as an excuse for his Russian imperialism.