Filmed on the remote Shetland Island of Foula (renamed Hirta, the Norse word for death, in the film), The Edge of the World is a drama set against the death agonies of a culture doomed by failing agriculture and the advent of steam trawlers which have stripped the ocean beds. Two families take opposed positions on whether to evacuate, thus separating two young lovers; the choice is exile or death, and the feud leads to both. This film, so rooted in place, is a forerunner of recurrent animistic themes in Powell's later work. William K. Everson writes, "Unlike (Flaherty's) Man of Aran, The Edge of the World didn't make the hardy islanders' austere existence seem pointless, and was imbued with a kind of fatalism that at times most reminds one of Murnau's Tabu. It was a big and quite unexpected success, its freshness and pictorial beauty matched by the unconventional good looks of its leading players, Niall McGinnis and Belle Chrystall."