A psychological drama taking place during a day and a night in the life of a young family living in a beautiful house by the sea in the village of Sandur in the Faroe Islands. At a first glance it seems like an ordinary, happy family - mum and dad and their 11-year-old daughter - but soon we realize that something dark and sinister lies lurking behind the facade waiting to explode.

The Wake is the title of a large-scale multimedia project, the main element of which is an eight-hour long silent movie. The film is based on Finnegans Wake by James Joyce (London 1939), a limit-transgressing, perhaps even limit-dissolving book that not only transgresses the limits of what literature is and is capable of, but inscribes transgressions on almost all conceivable levels. It is at the same time dream book, history book and necrology. It is almost impossible to determine whether we are dealing with a long poem, a prose narrative or a piece of drama.

Two friends, Rannvá and Barba, return to Faroe Islands after seven years abroad. The girls arouse both curiosity and outrage with their bizarre city appearance and emancipated behaviour. They embark on a road trip with one of the locals, Rúni, who - as it turns out - also carries a dark secret. The trio goes on a journey not just through the beautiful landscape of the Faroes but into the land of the past.