Sami Blood

Sami Blood (Swedish: Sameblod) is a 2016 Swedish coming-of-age[4] drama film written and directed by Amanda Kernell, as her feature film debut.[5][6] The first 10 minutes of the film (and part of the end) comes directly from the short film Stoerre Vaerie (2015, dir. Amanda Kernell). Stoerre Vaerie is Kernell's first film with Sami themes and it was nominated for the Short Film Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, Park City, Utah, USA.[7]

Sami Blood
SwedishSameblod
Directed byAmanda Kernell
Produced byLars G. Lindström
Written byAmanda Kernell
StarringLene Cecilia Sparrok
Hanna Alström
Anders Berg
Music byKristian Eidnes Andersen
CinematographySophia Olsson
Petrus Sjövik
Edited byAnders Skov[1]
Production
company
  • Nordisk Film Production Sverige AB
  • Bautafilm AB
  • Digipilot A/S
  • Nordisk Film Production A/S
  • Sveriges Television AB[1]
Release date
  • September 8, 2016 (2016-09-08) (Venice Film Festival)
  • March 3, 2017 (2017-03-03) (Sweden)
  • March 9, 2017 (2017-03-09) (Denmark)[2]
Country
  • Sweden
  • Denmark
  • Norway[1]
LanguageSwedish
Southern Sami[1][3]

The film is set in Sweden in the 1930s and concerns a 14-year-old girl who experiences prejudice at a nomad school for Sami children, and decides to escape her town and disavow her Sami heritage.[4] Parts of the story are inspired by Kernell's own grandmother.[8]

The film premiered at the 73rd edition of the Venice Film Festival in the Venice Days section, in which it was awarded the Europa Cinemas Label Award and the Fedeora Award for Best Debut Director.[9] It won the 2017 Lux Prize and was nominated for the 2017 Nordic Council Film Prize.[10]

Plot

In the present day, 78-year-old Elle-Marja (who calls herself Christina, these days) returns with her son, Olle, and granddaughter Sanna, to Lapland, and her childhood society, to attend her younger sister's funeral. Elle-Marja doesn't want to be there. She does not like the Sami people, calls them thieves and liars, and even though her first language is Southern Sami, refuses to speak it and pretends to not understand it. She even refuses to spend the night at her late sister's family home and would rather check into a hotel. (This part of Sami Blood is taken directly from Stoerre Vaerie.)

In the 1930s, 14-year-old Elle-Marja is sent with her younger sister Njenna to the nomad school. It is a boarding school for Sami children where a blonde teacher from Småland teaches them Swedish, and to know their place. Speaking Sami, even just among themselves outside of the classroom, results in beatings. Her feeling of alienation is only intensified when scientists from the Statens institut för rasbiologi (State Institute for Racial Biology) in Uppsala came to the school to measure and photograph the class naked in the presence of each other, teachers and neighbourhood boys.

After threatening a group of boys with her father's old knife because they called her racist names and slurs, the boys nick the edge of Elle-Marja's ear like the Sami people do with reindeer. She changes out of her gaeptie[11][12] (also called gapta,[11][12] gåptoe[11][12] depending on the Southern Sámi dialect) and takes one of her teacher's dresses from a clothes line.

A group of young soldiers pass her on their way to a dance and asks her to come along—it is the first time anyone who is not Sami has treated her like a human being. Elle-Marja sneaks off to the dance, and for a couple of hours she gets to experience how it feels to have the respect of others and be treated with decency by them without question. That is when she decides that she will leave Sápmi, go south to Uppsala, and study at the university.

School staff remove her from the dance and she is given a spanking with a switch. Elle-Marja approaches her teacher and requests to advance her studies in Uppsala, to which the teacher informs Elle-Marja that she is 'bright' but that the Sami people lack the sort of intelligence needed to study at a university. She claims that the Sami are 'needed' in northern Sweden and supposedly do not adapt well to urban settings. In response, Elle-Marja chooses to runs away to town, steals some clothes from a woman on a train, and burns her gaeptie. She invites herself to stay with Niklas, a young Swedish socialite whom she met at the dance. After being reluctantly let into the home for a night, Niklas' parents ask Elle-Marja to leave, revealing to their son that they know their guest is Sami. Elle-Marja is then forced to sleep outside in a park.

Elle-Marja enrolls in school by giving a false, Swedish-sounding name to the headmistress. Just as she is beginning to make new friends, she is billed for two semesters of schooling amounting to 200 krone. Elle-Marja is then invited to a party by her school friends, only to find the party is intended to celebrate Niklas' birthday. A group of Swedish anthropology students begin chatting with Elle-Marja, revealing that they know she is Sami by way of Niklas' parents. They force her to joik for the party-goers. Humiliated, Elle-Marja is approached by Niklas, to which she asks him for money. Unable to pay for school, Elle-Marja is forced to go back home. Elle-Marja returns to her family but is hostile to them for being Sami. She desires to sell her share of her reindeer in order to pay for her schooling, but her mother rejects this request and tells her daughter to leave. The next morning, Elle-Marja's mother wordlessly gives her daughter the money to continue her schooling in the form of a silver belt that once belonged to Elle-Marja's father.

At the end of the film, Elle-Marja apologises to her dead sister, Njenna, for leaving her culture and people.

Background

During the twentieth century, Sámis were portrayed as savages through “Swedish” eyes in many film productions.[13] At that time, Swedish society at large considered Sámis as being inferior, less intelligent, and unable to survive in a civilized city. On the one hand, they constantly tried to assimilate Sámi people, but on the other hand, they believed Sámis should be segregated and remain in their traditional way of life, so they never stopped emphasizing the difference between them.

According to Monica Kim Mecsei, the past decades have witnessed the change of the depiction of Sámi culture in cinema, from an outsider perspective to an insider one.[14] Sami Blood is exactly the example. It focuses on the youth of a Sámi girl Elle Marja (the other) and narrates her story of becoming someone else. Facing racism, some choose to isolate themselves in their own culture, while some choose to get into the main majority. Elle-Marja and her sister Njenna are in the same situation, but they make completely different choices. Elle-Marja desires to pass herself off as a “normal Swede” while Njenna is proud of her Sámi blood, refusing to make any changes. They are two typical attitudes toward the new culture. To be isolated, or to be assimilated? Sami Blood doesn't make value judgments on the options, but just presents the phenomenon to the audience. Neither of them is wrong or right. Young indigenous people face a self-identity crisis which was, is, and can be a universal problem all over the world. The story depicts the self-identity crisis of one Sámi girl, but more than that, it also focused on the dilemma among Sámi people. Thus, Sami Blood is supposed to be an important part of Sámi cinema in Swedish film history.

According to Mescei, a certain Sámi iconography has been created since Sámi people first appeared on the screen in 1947. Sámis were associated with mountain highlands, hunting, gathering, reindeers, and nomadism. The Sámi people were represented with Sámi tents, turf huts, the colorful traditional costumes and skiers in snow-covered landscapes. This iconography was created to define Sámi culture in general and it was often used with an imperialistic and touristic view on Sámi culture.[15] This reinforces a certain stereotype of the Sámi people. The Sámi people have stereotypically been portrayed as savages on the one hand who are barbaric and demonic in contrast to the Swedish or Norwegian people, on the other hand, they have been seen as the noble savages who live homogenously with nature, creating a romantic idea of Sámi identity. Sami Blood uses this Sámi iconography, not as a spectacle, but as an active part of the narrative. This is also an example of the inside perspective this film has on Sámi culture.

Cast
  • Lene Cecilia Sparrok – Elle-Marja (young)
  • Maj-Doris Rimpi – Elle-Marja (old)
  • Mia Sparrok – Njenna
  • Olle Sarri – Olle
  • Anne Biret Somby – Sanna
  • Hanna Alström – The Teacher
  • Anders Berg – Emanuel
  • Katarina Blind – Mother Anna
  • Beata Cavallin – Hedda
  • Malin Crépin – Elise
  • Julius Fleischanderl – Niklas
  • Ylva Gustafsson – Laevie
  • Tom Kappfjell – Aajja
  • Anna Sofie Bull Kuhmunen – Anna-Stina
  • Andreas Kundler – Gustav

Production

Sami Blood is the first feature fiction film to have received funding from the International Sámi Film Institute. Evolving out of a short made by Kernell that was screened at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival,[3] the film was shot partly in Tärnaby-Hemavan, in northern Sweden,[16] and partly in Uppsala and Stockholm.

Amanda Kernell, the director of Sami Blood, who has a Sami father and a Swedish mother, mentioned in an interview that although the film is about 1930’s Swedish society, she did not just want to make it a historical film which shows faked reality, but wanted it to be authentic and communicate real feelings.[17] She cared a lot about every detail in producing it, such as shooting locations and casting. According to her interview, the girl who played Elle-Marjar is a true Sami girl who does reindeer herding in her everyday life. Besides this, some stories in the film were based on real experiences she had had before, or real anecdotes she heard from her family and Sami people through interviews. By the use of her own identity and materials she could find, Amanda managed to represent the nuanced negative atmosphere flowing between the dominating and the dominated in 1930’s Swedish society.

Reception

On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 96%, based on 23 reviews with an average rating of 7.2/10.[18]

Awards

Sami Blood won the top prize at the 2017 Göteborg Film Festival, the Dragon Award Best Nordic Film. A prize of one million Swedish kronor (approximately US$114,000), it is one of the world's largest film prizes. In addition, Sophia Olsson won the Sven Nykvist Cinematography Award for the film.[19][20]

At the 57th Thessaloniki International Film Festival, the film won the Human Values Award.[21]

At the Tokyo International Film Festival, Sami Blood won second prize in the juried competition, and Lene Cecilia Sparrok won the best actress award.[22] Sparrok (a teenage reindeer herder in real life) gave her acceptance speech in Sami.[23]

At the Venice Film Festival, the film played in the Venice Days section and won the Fedeora Award for Best Young Director[24] and the Europa Cinemas Label (for best European film in Venice Days).[3][25]

At the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, the film won the Valhalla Award for Best Nordic Film.[8] On 14 November 2017, it won the Lux Prize.[26]

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References
  1. "Sami Blood". Toronto International Film Festival. Archived from the original on 4 September 2016. Retrieved 26 February 2017.
  2. "Sameblod kåret som Bedste Nordisk Film" (in Danish). Nordisk Film. 6 February 2017. Retrieved 16 July 2018.
  3. Vivarelli, Nick (14 December 2016). "Swedish-Sami Director Amanda Kernell on 'Sami Blood' and Past Racism Against Sami People in the North of Sweden". Variety. Penske Business Media.
  4. Kernell, Amanda (31 January 2017). "Sami Blood: A coming-of-age tale set in Sweden's dark past". Sveriges Radio.
  5. van Hoeij, Boyd (1 September 2016). "'Sami Blood' ('Same Blod'): Venice Review". The Hollywood Reporter. Prometheus Global Media. Retrieved 20 October 2016.
  6. Lodge, Guy (1 September 2016). "Film Review: 'Sami Blood'". Variety. Penske Business Media. Retrieved 20 October 2016.
  7. "Great Northern Mountain (2015)". IMDb. Retrieved 4 April 2017.
  8. Mitchell, Wendy (12 February 2017). "'Sami Blood' scores more deals". Screen Daily. Screen International. Retrieved 16 July 2018.
  9. Scarpa, Vittoria (9 September 2016). "The Venice Days Award goes to The War Show". CinEuropa. Creative Europe Media. Retrieved 20 October 2016.
  10. Pham, Annika (22 August 2017). "Five Nordic Films Nominated for Nordic Council Film Prize 2017". Nordisk Film & TV Fond. Retrieved 16 July 2018.
  11. "kofte". Nedtedigibaakoeh (Norwegian-Southern Sámi dictionary) (in Norwegian). The Centre for Saami Language Technology. Retrieved 31 October 2017.
  12. "Om sørsamer" [About the Southern Sámi] (in Norwegian). The National Museum of Southern Sámi History and Culture. Retrieved 31 October 2017.
  13. Marina Dahlquist, “The Attractions of the North: Early Film Expeditions to the Exotic Snowscape”, in Films on Ice, ed. Anna Stenport (UK: Edinburgh University Press, 2014), 282–283.
  14. Monica Mecsei, “Cultural Stereotypes and Negotiations in Sámi Cinema”, in Films on Ice, ed. Anna Stenport (UK: Edinburgh University Press, 2014), 72–73.
  15. Monica Kim Mecsei, “Cultural stereotypes and negotiations in Sámi Cinema”. In Films on Ice: Cinemas of the Arctic eds. Scott MacKenzie and Anna Westerståhl Stenport (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2015), 73
  16. Barents_Culture (4 February 2017). "Homecoming of "Sami Blood"". Barents Culture. Retrieved 16 July 2018.
  17. Emily Buder (12 June 2017). "'Sami Blood'Why Amanda Kernell Broke All 3 Rules For Making A Feature Debut". No Film School. Retrieved 9 May 2019.
  18. "Sami Blood (2017)". Rotten Tomatoes. Fandango Media. Retrieved 16 July 2018.
  19. Simon, Alissa (4 February 2017). "'Sámi Blood' Tops 40th Goteborg Film Festival". Variety. Penske Business Media. Retrieved 16 July 2018.
  20. "Here are the Dragon Award winners" (Press release). Göteborg Film Festival. 4 February 2017. Archived from the original on 23 August 2017. Retrieved 16 July 2018.
  21. Grivas, Alexis (14 November 2016). "'Kills On Wheels' wins in Thessaloniki". Screen Daily. Screen International. Retrieved 16 July 2018.
  22. Schilling, Mark (3 November 2016). "'Yesterday' Takes Top Prize at Tokyo Film Festival". Variety. Penske Business Media. Retrieved 16 July 2018.
  23. Brasor, Philip (3 November 2016). "Holocaust comedy snares grand prize at 29th Tokyo International Film Festival". The Japan Times. Retrieved 16 July 2018.
  24. "Fedeora Awards in 2016". Fedeora. Retrieved 26 February 2017.
  25. "Amanda Kernell's SAMI BLOOD (Sameblod) wins Europa Cinemas Venice Label". Europa Cinemas. 9 September 2016. Archived from the original on 22 December 2017.
  26. Euronews (14 November 2017). "Sámi Blood Wins LUX Award". Euronews. Retrieved 14 November 2017.
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