La ragazza delle renne

So cute and causes so much anger... I thought it would be a calm, silly film, but it causes so much anger, indignation and rancidity that it makes us want to try to kill this disgusting being, it only gets worse when we see the protagonist being treated with so many blessings misogyny and sexism, I'm running out of patience for these fictions that cause me staleness and internal anguish... The film is very good, I just don't know if it's me who let these things get me down or if we really have a negative impact on it... .

A young woman struggles to defend her Sámi heritage in a world where xenophobia is on the rise, climate change is threatening reindeer inheritance, and young people choose suicide in the face of collective desperation.

We're in the reindeer herding region. These are the Sami, an indigenous people of Sweden, who make their living from reindeer herding. They have to cohabit with the locals, who want the region to be developed for mining. There's also a non-Sami native who enjoys killing the reindeer. But the police are not investigating. A young Sami woman tries to move the investigation forward against the police's will.

We're constantly in the cold, in the snow. The pace is slow. So is the pace of the film. But the plot, simple on the face of it, contains twists and turns (the mistreatment of women is mentioned, for example) that mean we're not in an investigative film with a false culprit to distract the viewer. The culprit is known very quickly, the plot being that the police never manage to catch him. So this is not a detective film, but a drama. With little vignettes of local life in the Sami community. The film has a realistic tone, which makes it a little slow. But it's coherent. Rather than being slow, it takes its time to develop the plot, articulated with local life.

Note that the music is far too present. It insists in a heavy-handed way to make the film seem suspenseful.

While this movie is far from perfect it tells a thrilling story about the racism and prejudice that the Sámi face in their everyday lives. The cinematography is beautiful and the acting is stellar, especially by the protagonist. Since it is based on a book, it can perhaps be forgiven about falling into the same tropes about the Sámi being so close connected to their reindeer (it feels as if every movie makes sure to point out how important the reindeer herding is to the population even though far from every Sámi does this for a living).

The plot was decent and I can understand the frustration that the Sámi must feel since acts of violence towards them and their livestock is far from fictional. A few characters were underdeveloped and didn't add all that much to the story, which made the movie feel disjointed at times.

Overall it is worth the watch and tells an important story.

The movie is severly misscategorised and this seems to be the main issue with bad reviews, that it is a lame thriller...

This is a great movie about the struggle of indigenous people trying to protect themselves and their traditional lifestyle in the face of predjudice, discriminaton, hatred, misogyny and violence.

It feels very real and unsettling at times, because it is something you can imagine all over the world. They might not kill the *Reindeers* of the Navajo, Rohingya or Koorie peoples, but besides that they often face the same hardships and fights as the Sámi in this movie.

I'm going to check out the book by sámi author Ann-Helén Laestadius this movie is based on.

Its shelved mostly as contemporary fiction btw and does not try to be a thriller....

I'm so sick of the standard formula for American films that involves nothing but violence and evil, and the worst qualities of human beings. This film has touches of that, because that is part of humanity, but I also appreciate that it was based on a true story and it is, in the end, a triumph for a woman protagonist who has dealt with a lot of adversity. I hope we can see more films like this. The characters are realistic. Hopefully the story is closely aligned with the true story. It's also eye-opening to an American like me who was not aware of this part of the Swedish population. Again, great movie.