The first film ever to be made in the Skolt Sámi language (and one that only a few hundred speak today), director Katja Gauriloff‘s “Je’vida” gracefully conveys the struggle to rediscover your roots after suppressing an unpleasant personal history. It’s a melancholy meditation on buried trauma and the process of healing, but with the sorrow comes a ray of optimism and acceptance.
After her sister’s death, indigenous Skolt Sámi woman Iida (Sanna-Kaisa Palo) returns to her childhood home in Finland to clean it out before it is scheduled to be torn down. She’s traveling with her niece Sanna (Seidi Haarla), a young woman she’s only just met. Going through the personal belongings of the past, painful memories filled with deep hurt and crushing shame resurface, especially when Iida recalls how she was uprooted from her family and sent to a state-run boarding school, forced to change her name, learn Finnish, and deny her heritage. It’s a place where she was humiliated, bullied, and taught to be ashamed of herself and everything that made her who the young girl she was.
It’s a touching story about how two generations of women come together to find value in their lineage. It’s only after seeing Iida show zero attachment to sentimental family items that we learn she was born Je’vida (Agafia Niemenmaa), and her life before assimilation was very different. The film’s narrative features three distinct timelines, all exploring different stages of Iida’s life.
Gauriloff chooses to tell her story in black and white, shooting with a 4:3 ratio which evokes a powerful feeling of the past. Cinematographer Tuomo Hutri lends a haunting and beautiful expression of distressing memories with his camerawork, and composer Laura Naukkarinen’s original score works in tandem to set the mood.
“Je’vida” is a story about reclaiming yourself in a world that would rather ignore your existence. It’s sometimes heartbreaking but is also an empowering story of ancestry, especially as Iida takes back control of not only her culture, but her true identity.
By: Louisa Moore
Screen Zealots 