Ellos eatnu - La elva leve

Saw this at the Leeuwarden (NL) film festival 2023. Of course, we miss lots of background information on the issues that are at stake here, and what already had happened to arrive at the situation portrayed in the story at hand. However, I had no issue understanding it and connecting the dots. The main ingredients can be inferred on-the-fly, drawing analogies from similar controverses in other countries where minorities are ignored or pestered. Well-known discriminating factors are race and religion, but any other criterium to label people can do. Plenty of analogies will help understanding what is going on here, including what people do to hide their identity to help their career.

At center stage in this movie we meet Ester, her immediate family and several relatives farther away in line, most of them being a mixture of Norwegian and Sami in several grades. Ester does not really want to know she has Sami blood and tries to hide it were possible. Others emphasize in their clothes which side they are on, especially now when a crucial decision is to be made (or rather, already has been made) in parliament about a big dam development that is bound to wipe original Sami grounds clean, in favor of electricity for the general population who does not care about historical grounds.

Still, many things are left unexplained. The most important one is the derelict shed that we see in the opening scene, obviously something dramatic happening there but details are dearly missed. The same shed returns several times later, without getting a clue on what it is all about and why it seems so important.

Nevertheless, in spite of minor unclarities, the movie presents a clear overview of how opinions can be formed and changed. Most people don't care about minorities, wanting them to be kept out of sight, or at best find them a nuisance, or a stumbling block preventing progress for everyone else. It makes you think how we ourselves would act in similar circumstances, how we would balance our own interests against a minority who stand for their interests. Think NIMBY and variations thereof.

All in all, the main purpose of how politics should work in our form of government, is to protect minorities from harmful intentions of the majority. Not always is survival of the fittest the best strategy to arrive at a livable society. A balancing of interest is needed instead. We see it work and not work in this movie. I scored a 4 out of 5 for the audience award when leaving the theater.

Many viewers might go into the movie thinking it is about saving a river - but really , it is about giving an impactful insight into what it feels like being robbed of your cultural identity, what assimilation feels like.

The acting, directing, cinematography and music really comes together to give gravity to the scenes.

Having the main character work in school as a teacher, works well to highlight the big role the public school system played in the assimilation policies that were in place.

I am unsure in what ways this movie communicates to audiences that does not know the backdrop of Norwegian-Sami relations, and if foreign viewers might find certain elements under-communicated, but for me, this movie was, like the best movies, a teacher of empathy for other people's struggles.

The movie is more about the main characters personal journey, with the river protests as a catalyst for change, than the actual river protests.

A must see, especially for Norwegians, Swedish, Finnish and Sami people.

As a coastal Sami this movie totally hit me in the gut. I have never been so provoked, angry and sad watching a movie or a TV series in my more than 50 year on this planet. From family members prejudice to other family members shame of their background was on spot with how many people in the coastal communities was and many still are thinking. How bullies treated sami youngsters, the racism amongst her co worker(s), I saw that growing up in the 80s. A highly provocative movie, a must see for all, especially those who does not understand the sami assimilation and shame. The sami activism was not the main point of the movie, it was the emotions that made it this good.

This film is about the struggle that we, the Sami people, have had to fight both as a people and as individuals and continue to fight to this day against the state and the racism we often encounter from the Norwegians, even though the film takes place between 1979 and 1982, many of the attitudes still exist in our time. There are some who think that this film is about the Alta River and the building of the Alta Dam, but this is not the case, it is about the Sami's fight for their own rights and the right to exist as a people. The Alta Dam is simply a blanket on which the film is built. Long live the Sami people.

This movie is as painful as it is beautiful, in equal measures. However, knowing some of the context of the Alta-struggle and its importance in defining new terms for the larger conflict between sami and the norwegian state (it stirred an awakening in sami pride and will to resist), brings a welcome light into the sad atmosphere that the movie conveys.

It is beautiful also in character portrayal, in the subtlety of some of the story being conveyed through details. An important such is the run down shed that one reviewer is confused about. It is the fishing shed where she talks to her father in the beginning, minutes before he hangs himself. He is never shown, we just get to hear his voice and then he dies, his death never mentioned explicitly, but through the silence that he leaves behond. A very fine move by the movie makers to portray him as one in a people made silent and invisible by racist policies. One of so many male sami suicides. Yet his absence fills the rest of the movie, reflecting in all of his daughters actions. From her shame, to her rediscovered identity and pride.

It is also visiually beutiful, with the era being sooo spot on, in clothing, gadgets, furniture and so on. A feast for an eye who loves the 70s style!

For anyone who wonders; they lost the struggle against the hydroplant. It was finished in 1987.