16/09/2026 - The Swedish director shares some thoughts on her creative journey and whether there is any shared DNA between her latest film and her prior works

(© Martin Källqvist)

Brace Your Heart, entered in the Platform section of the 51st Toronto International Film Festival and soon off to the main competition of the 74th San Sebastián International Film Festival, is the third feature by acclaimed Swedish director Amanda Kernell, whose 2016 debut, Sámi Blood, marked an instant breakthrough. Several parallels between that film and the new one can be found, primarily through the setting of Swedish Sápmi and the young female main characters. Kernell shared some thoughts on her creative journey.

Cineuropa: After your second film, Charter, Brace Your Heart returns to the Sámi environment that’s at the core of your first film, Sámi Blood. The two movies share some common DNA in that a young woman is the protagonist in both.
Amanda Kernell: Two young women making some radical choices, yes. I’m thinking that a third one should be done one day, although I don’t know what it will be about yet. Brace Your Heart is, to me, a film about betrayal and moving on – which, to a certain extent, also touches on the themes of Sámi Blood, although in a historical context. In this new one, we’re very much in the here and now.

When we first meet your young woman, Ejva, she’s just lost her father, the family breadwinner, and is now aiming to take over. The operation is reindeer herding, a task playing out in the wilds of nature. Running in parallel is Ejva’s love life, divided between one man who seems nice and another man who is not so nice, and who also attempts to turn the community against her. She’s up against some complex options, right?
To me, the key words at the heart of the story are “liberation”, “healing” and, not least, “forgiveness”. How do you move on after traumatic events when you live in a society where everything really needs to be forgiven in the name of survival? It’s about healing and being able to heal, and about freeing yourself from a difficult situation, especially if you don’t have the choice of just leaving. Forgiveness could be an option, or perhaps even love, in order to heal. I’ve been very immersed in these questions.

Let’s also look at the expression that gives the film its title. What’s the origin of “brace your heart”?
In Sámi, the expression is “garrat du váimmu”, which is also our Sámi title. It literally translates as “harden your heart” or “make your heart harder”. When I did test shoots between Elli Sara Valkeapää and the older actors, like her grandparents, I’d sometimes hear them using this expression. It’s used as a piece of advice, so why not for a young herder? “It’s a tough life, and there will be brutal things happening – so brace your heart.”

The film is richly cast, with a few faces we’ve seen before but also some brand-new ones. Can you talk about your process?
We started to cast around three years before we started to shoot, and I aimed to find the main characters first and then take it from there. Elli Sara Valkeapää was the very first one I found, and I immediately felt that this was Ejva – she can be both tough and brittle, and carry the story. She had appeared in Ovias, a 360-degree art installation that was part of a Sámi project entered at the 2022 Venice Biennale. Andte Gaup-Juuso, who plays Heaika, the herder Ejva first gets involved with, had the lead in the 2015 short film Sámi Bojá, and we also see Anni-Kristiina Juuso, a very well-established actress, who was in Niels Gaup’s The Kautokeino Rebellion and other films. But Vincent Niia, who plays Nejla, Heaika’s cousin with whom Ejva falls in love, had never done anything before.

Most of the actors have one thing in common, though: they all live and work within the reindeer community, either doing full-time herding or as members of herder families. That aspect was probably the most important one, in order to lend the film a true authenticity. But it also presented a problem, as many of them had more important things to do than act – namely, looking after the reindeer. Some hesitated for over a year before coming on board. I’m deeply grateful that they finally said yes.

Your depiction of reindeer herding can almost suggest a kind of western, or should we perhaps call it a “northern”?
The expression I’ve sometimes used is “Arctic western”! And to a degree, we’ve thought about it as such. But more than anything else, it’s a drama. My storytelling comes very much from the drama form; it’s what I watch and what I’m inspired by. I’m not that acquainted with the western mindset, per se. But certainly, the environment can recall something western-like, not least in terms of how physically demanding it can get.