Despite strong feelings about the killing of whales and the impact of international whaling bans, the people of the Faroe Islands, a Danish community, still practise an annual whale cull. Each year they entice a pod of whales into their harbour and men and youths enter the water to slaughter them. As many as 1000 whales die in this one massacre.

To Kill a Whale investigates what actually happens in the Faroes, retracing the island’s history and looking at the first film of the whale cull which was recorded by investigators from the Environmental Investigation Agency, and which encouraged international condemnation of the cull. This documentary looks at the arguments from both the Faroese people and the conservationists. Against the widely held opinion that this is no more than a bloody and barbaric ritual, the islanders argue their case convincingly, explaining how they take a small proportion of the total whale population in the North Sea, killing the whales to use as food during the long, harsh winter months.