The Monastery - Mr Vig and the Nun

The eccentric looking Mr Vig walks through rooms and ponders what nuns need. Ashtrays? No, nuns don't smoke. Are the blankets thick enough? They're used to roughing it, right? The rooms belong to a Danish castle, which Mr Vig bought with the idea of establishing a monastery. Since 1950 he's been dreaming of this, and his dream appears to be nearing realisation now that an orthodox community in Russia has agreed to send nuns and priests to help with its development. The delegation is lead by Sister Amvrosija, who has her own ideas about how a Russian monastery should be run. The scene is set for a test of wills between the stubborn nun and the equally obstinate Mr Vig. Filmmaker Pernille Rose Gronkjaer follows Mr Vig throughout the monastery's first year. During the shoot, he often asks her for advice and even physical help, as she interviews him about his childhood, his views on love, religion, and Sister Amvrosija.

Nature and culture, the prayer hours and the seasons, winter scenery and the iconostasis, the nun's kitchen and Vig's library. The secular and the sacred. Gronkjaer's film details two different kinds of beauty. Like Vig, it cannot choose one over the other, depicting them side by side, closely cut together.

Danish Film Institute