SHORT FILMS

The 6th Annual Sámi Film Festival returns to Scandinavia House this February! This year’s program will include in-person screenings on February 9 & 10 and virtual screenings from February 8 through 11. On Saturday, February 10, join us for an afternoon of short films, screening in two sessions with a 20-minute intermission between.

The Festival will open with a feature screening of Je’Vida on Friday night; learn more here. The films will also screen virtually; learn more here.

SHORT FILMS | SESSION 1 — 1 PM

Áfruvvá – Mermaid (2022)
Directed by: Marja Helander | 14 min.
The áfruvvá is a Sámi sea-being, the ghost of a drowned person. Yearning for warmth, she emerges from the sea to a world devoid of humans and experiences humanity through an abandoned museum.

Ovanlandet/The Daughters of the Midnight Sun (1985)
Directed by: Ylva Floreman and Peter Östlund | 40 min.
In this film about the Sámi people, the original population of northern Scandinavia, their nomadic life belongs to the past, but for a few short weeks each summer they return to their mountains to live as before. Their women talk about the price they have paid for progress and of their longing back to their traditional way of life, far north of the Polar Circle.

Njuokčamat/The Tongues (2019)
Directed by: Marja Bål Nango and Ingir Ane Bål Nango | 15 min.
When a Sámi woman is attacked by a man during a blizzard on the tundra while she is herding reindeer, her sister senses that something is wrong, and sets off in search for her. Wrapped in fear and confusion, both women will unite in their fight for revenge.

Skádja (2022)
Directed by: Eili Bråstad | 16 min.
A meeting between two women in the forest has a strong impact on them both. Can they overcome their traumas?

There will be a 20-minute break between sessions.

SHORT FILMS | SESSION 2 — 3 PM

Give Us Our Skeletons! (2000)
Directed by: Pau-Anders Simma| 49 min.
This is a film about a man and his lineage, and it is the story of a century pervaded by racism, oppression and the persecution of peoples low down on the list of “noble races.”

Ellos Fovsen
Directed by: Dennis Møller
Ellos Fovsen is about the demonstration against the illegal wind turbines that were set up in Fosen by the Norwegian government, who went above the Supreme Court’s ruling and still had them built, creating an ongoing human rights violation of over 830 days.

Whispers of Reindeer Milk (2023)
Director: Mihkkal Hætta and Ándaras Leonardsen | 18 min.
In this short film exploring an alternative universe in Sápmi where primordial knowledge was removed from the colonists, open, meditative, and persistent images create a journey to and from these different landscapes.

Muohtačalmmit/Snowflakes (2022)
Directed by: Hans Pieski and Arttu Nieminen | 9 min.
Muohtačalmmit (Snowfall) is an experimental film about the flow of water as a metaphor for Sámi people in the compression of modern times. The film also deals with the meaning of water as a sacred element, pathway, and daily source of sustenance for the Sámi people, and paints a dystopia of how Sápmi will breathe in the future in the middle of energy and mineral policy pressure.

THE 2024 SÁMI FILM FESTIVAL

Presented as a partnership between the National Nordic Museum in Seattle and Scandinavia House in New York, The Sámi Film Festival includes a variety of contemporary and historical Sámi features, documentaries and short films, with selections by guest curator Liselotte Wajstedt, a Sámi filmmaker from Sweden and the director of The Silence in Sápmi and Sire and the Last Summer (dir. Liselotte Wajstedt, Sweden, 2022). Since originating as a partnership between the National Nordic Museum and Pacific Sámi Searvi in 2018, The Sámi Film Festival has become an onsite event drawing audiences from the East and West Coasts.