Sami Blood (Amanda Kernell, 2016): Sweden | Denmark | Norway

Reviewed by Elijah Kimmel viewed in the Fiesta 5 Theatre at the 2017 Santa Barbara International Film Festival.

Sami Blood is an excellent period piece and coming of age story that explores themes of persecution, ambition, and heritage in a culture most audience members will be newly introduced to. The film is Directed by Amanda Kernell and stars Line Cecilia Sparrok as Elle-Marja, this the first feature for both showing promise in their future careers.

The film opens on an 80-year-old Elle-Marja who is being forced to go to her estranged sister’s funeral. She doesn’t want to go the because it is a Sami funeral and will make her face the past that she left behind in order to become a Swede. At the funeral she pretends to not speak Sami and says she is from Southern Sweden, which is the furthest you can be from where the Sami live. We then flashback to the 1930’s when Elle-Marja was just a 14-year-old girl living with her younger sister and mother in a tipi, herding reindeer like her Sami, and essentially living what we would call “the simple life”. She and her younger sister are then sent to an all Sami boarding school by the Swedish government. At this boarding school they are taught just enough skills to get by and are expected to returned back to the Lapland and go back to “the simple life”, never allowed to assimilate with Swedish society. Elle-Marja wants to get a full education which the Sami are not allowed to partake in because the Swedish view them as having “inferior brains”. Frustrated from being held back because of her race, she makes the tough decision of leaving her sister and mom behind to escape her Sami school in hopes of passing as a Swede and getting an education.

Many scenes in this film show the nuances of how the Swedish viewed and treated the Sami. While attending boarding school the Sami are subjected to pseudo-scientific genetic test, an effort by the Swedes to find evidence that the Sami are inferior. The doctor at the school measures her nose, chin, and head size, similar to what the Nazis did to the Jews, and then for a picture makes Elle-Marja take her clothes off in front of her peers and Swedish boy peeping through the window. Sparrok give an excellent performance in this scene as an insecure girl exposed to a whole room of people. Another powerful scene is when Elle Maria asks her teacher to write a letter to a school she would like to but is denied. Her teachers excuse is that the Sami has “inferior brains” and that they would “die out” if they assimilated into modern society. Both scenes show the Swedish viewed the Sami as people who could never be modern or live in society because they were destined to a life of herding sheep and thats all their brains could handle. You could feel Elle-Marja frustration as a succeeding student denied her full potential to learn. The film also features amazing landscape cinematography of the Lapland, which feature snowy mountains and grassy plains.

I was pleasantly surprised by this film. Although this film is about the Sami the subject matter of this film can be related to the Nazi persecution of the Jews, the Europeans conquering the Native Americans, and slavery of Africans. I was riveted by Sparrok’s performance as a girl who wants to experience more out of like than what society is letting her have. I strongly urge anyone to see this movie as I think it will make them a more empathetic person.