European supremacy and race science have affected Indigenous people everywhere, and the trauma sowed across the world continues today. Sami Blood revolves around the life of Elle Marja (Lene Cecilia Sparrok), a Sami girl wise beyond her years who gets snatched by Swedish bureaucrats alongside other tribal youth in the 1930s and enrolled in a boarding school so they can learn the the allegedly “civilized” ways of the West.
No yoiking allowed in these classrooms; the children learn under threat of whip the basics of polite Swedish society. Their bleached-blonde teacher viciously deflates Elle Marja’s dreams of attending a “normal” school, and our young protagonist takes her mentor’s racism to heart. It’s heartbreaking to watch the self-loathing hatch within her, especially because you wonder what would happen if she blasted all that passion and vitriol outward toward her oppressors. Sadly, she does direct her hatred toward her family, leading to a lifetime of bitterness and resentment that the audience can infer from the lessons she learns early on.
This dramatic story happened in forced-assimilation camps and schools across the world, and although the film takes place in a particular Nordic context, the pain of colonizer-induced alienation animating her coming-of-age also animates our globalized culture today. It finishes on an ambiguous and unsettled note, and you’re left wondering whether we can’t hope for a better resolution than the one Elle Marja attempts to grasp at the end.
9
+ Vivid protagonist characterization, haunting story, visually engrossing
– Other characters were lacking
Sami Blood
Directed by Amanda Kernell
With Sparrok
Jean Cocteau Cinema, NR, 110 min.
