‘An Impossible Task’: Finland’s Katja Gauriloff on Making ‘Je’vida,’ the First Skolt Sámi-Language Film
Christopher Vourlias Finnish director Katja Gauriloff won the top prize this week at the Finnish Film Affair’s showcase of fiction works in progress for “Je’vida,” an intimate historical drama that is the first film ever shot in the Skolt Sámi language. The film centers on Iida, an elderly Skolt Sámi woman who finds herself in the process of selling her family’s old house and land while keeping her cultural heritage secret from her niece. It’s the story of a woman who has abandoned her past under the pressures of assimilation, weaving across three different historical eras to examine the fate of Finland’s Indigenous peoples in the post-war period.