Co-writer and director Katja Gauriloff’s Je’vida technically tells the story in three parts but it mostly shows two. During the first, it shows the titular character as a young Sami girl (Agafia Niemenmaa). Her grandfather’s death causes her to act rambunctiously, forcing her grandmother to enter her into a school which is actually the Finnish version of residential schools. The second is her as Iida (Sanna-Kaisa Palo). Back at her childhood home, she burns evidence of her heritage, much to her niece’s Sanna’s (Seidi Haarla) chagrin. Sanna, nonetheless, figures out her heritage through Iida. It flashes back and forward and introduces the third part where she’s a young adult (Heidi Gauriloff). There, she oscillates between both identities, finding love while caring for her grandmother.
Je’vida probably has the most brutal image I’ll see at the fest, as the child version buries her younger sister. What makes that brutality hit hard is how it reveals those moments sparingly and without melodrama. Through rough black and white photography and a full screen ratio, things like a patch of earth becomes more haunting than most images. It mixes the horrific and the fantastical with the realities of a people losing and regaining themselves. It captures a pain so vivid that it’s understandable why some people prefer to forget. The editing here is also seamless, respectfully capturing how the past returns to old Iida. It shows how its characters age while the nature they left behind stays as a place to return.
- Rated: NR
- Genre: Drama, History
- Release Date: 9/13/2023
- Directed by: Katja Gauriloff
- Starring: Agafia Niemenmaa, Heidi Juliana Gauriloff, Sanna-Kaisa Palo
- Produced by: Anna Nuru, Joonas Berghäll, Satu Majava
- Written by: Katja Gauriloff, Niillas Holmberg
- Studio: Oktober
