Sámi filmmaking continues to gain international visibility, and now, another title emerging from Sápmi has landed at the San Sebastián International Film Festival and the Toronto International Film Festival. Screened in the main competition of the former and the Platform section of the latter, Brace Your Heart is the third feature by Swedish-Sámi filmmaker Amanda Kernell. Set in a remote Sámi village in the mountains, it follows 20-year-old Ejva (portrayed by Elli Sara Valkeapää), who inherits her late father’s reindeer herd and must learn to keep it thriving while navigating the expectations of the community around her.

(El artículo continúa más abajo - Inf. publicitaria)

Among the members of this community is Heaika (Andte Gaup-Juuso), a local leader who develops feelings for Ejva. Although hesitant, she appears increasingly compelled to accept the relationship. The arrival of Heaika’s cousin Nejla (Vincent Niia), however, introduces her to a different kind of intimacy, setting in motion events whose consequences affect both her emotional life and her ability to care for the herd.

Kernell offers an insightful glimpse into a society still shaped by patriarchal structures, yet populated at the same time by remarkably strong women. Crucially, the screenplay never turns this tension into a thesis. It remains firmly rooted in the realities of Ejva’s life, resisting melodramatic escalation, didacticism and the more predictable mechanisms of conventional romance plots. Relationships, duties and inherited expectations are allowed to overlap naturally, making her struggle for independence plain to see on screen.

The film is sustained above all by Valkeapää’s performance. Ejva is not constructed predominantly through dialogue: much of what we understand about her emerges through silences, pauses, facial expressions and the way she listens to those around her. Valkeapää handles these registers with considerable precision. Even the smallest reactions suggest how much Ejva is absorbing without articulating it, lending an unusual weight to otherwise ordinary exchanges. Gradually, the gentle and wounded young woman becomes someone increasingly determined to regain control over her own existence, without the transformation ever feeling forced or schematic.

Sophia Olsson’s pristine cinematography takes a similarly restrained approach. At times observational and at others carefully composed, the images remain controlled without unnecessary visual flourishes. The imposing landscape is present but is never allowed to reduce Sápmi to picturesque scenery; the emphasis stays firmly on Ejva and the physical realities of her daily life.

Rebekka Karijord and Kristian Eidnes Andersen’s score provides an effective counterpoint, with its a cappella vocal passages among its most affecting elements. Like the rest of the filmmaking, it accompanies, rather than instructs.

All in all, there is little grandstanding in Brace Your Heart. Kernell instead fully trusts her protagonist and leading actress to carry the emotional weight. The result is a delicate, assured portrait of a young woman moving from hurt and uncertainty towards the harder-won ability to determine the course of her own life.

Brace Your Heart is a Swedish-Norwegian-Danish-Icelandic-Bulgarian co-production staged by Nordisk Film Production in co-production with Forest People, Compass Films, Invictus, Nordisk Film Production Denmark, Filmpool Nord, SVT and Film i Väst. The feature's world sales are handled by TrustNordisk.