“An enveloping look at a community whose centuries-old way of life may be ending.” — John DeFore, Hollywood Reporter
“A film that is jaw-dropping in its visual splendour.” — Matthew Anderson, Cinevue
“Like the islands, the doc isn’t what it first seems to be. It never falls into issue-film trappings, but it’s also not a mere ethnographic look at a culture with unpopular customs in a changing modern world.” — Christopher Campbell, Nonfics
“The film’s strength is that these Islanders are rarely made out to be villains. Rather they are the unwilling participants in a dangerous race to extinction that they had no real part in.” — Glenn Dunks, Film Experience
“The Islands And the Whales knows when to be small, and its intimate portraits of day-to-day life illustrate how the monumental intersects with the personal.” — Jennie Kermode, Eye for Film
“For all the sweeping shots of dramatic Faroese landscapes, it is the small, intimate scenes that are most affecting. Those scenes, in which families discuss their mercury levels around the dinner table and a doctor snips off a lock of a young girl’s hair to test, bring home a sense that this should not just be a battle of ideas, that people’s lives are at stake.” — Karen Gardiner, Sierra Magazine for the Sierra Club