Unveiled in the Panorama section at the 76th Berlinale, Árru [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Elle Sofe Sara
scheda film] is Elle Sofe Sara’s first feature film.

Cineuropa: What was your initial intention? Was it above all about speaking of your Sami culture?
Elle Sofe Sara: At the beginning, I didn’t really have the idea of a film. What I had been feeling for many years was this very difficult situation faced by many Sami families when you herd reindeer and the land is required for industrial use. And then there are also many internal problems within families. There is a double injustice, a double hardship. That is how it all began: I wanted to try to give shape to these two ideas, to show what someone in that situation feels.

Was the idea of a kind of musical present from the very beginning?
Yes. I trained as a dancer, so dance, movement and the body are things I find fascinating. I truly believe in that, especially when it comes to reaching different kinds of audiences around the world: it is something deeply human and very fundamental. Of course, I have seen Hollywood musicals, but Dancer in the Dark is probably the closest reference to the direction I wanted to take, in terms of the seriousness and weight of the story I had in mind.

How did you work on the screenplay with Johan Fasting to find the right balance between the film’s subject, the connection to nature and the use of the traditional joik chant?
Johan wrote the first draft, which we tested with some members of the cast and gathered their feedback and suggestions. Then we found the shooting locations; I sent photos, footage of reindeer, and so on, to help shape the script. As for the songs, we found the lead actress, Sara Marielle Gaup Beaska, quite early on. She is a very experienced joik composer, so she quickly made many proposals that we shared with Johan. We built the world of Árru step by step.

The film centres on a woman who is nothing like a conventional film protagonist.
I feel very close to the character of Maia. Among Sami society, but also more broadly in many cultures, women often find themselves midstream, acting as a point of balance for communication within families, but also for the economic side of things – reindeer herding in this case. It is a role they have not chosen, a position that is not easy because you are the one people lean on or depend upon. I was very interested in this kind of main character, who is almost like a secondary figure in a more conventional film, because she is not the one who suffered the abuse – her brother is. Yet she is the one we follow in how she experiences and lives through this situation.

It is also the portrait of three generations of women and of a gradual evolution.
The grandmothers’ generation attended boarding schools and truly felt, in their own flesh, the process of assimilation that took place in Norway, but also in Sweden and Finland. They experienced the dominant culture – Norwegian culture in this case – as an enemy, or as something that should never be spoken about. Maia is, in a way, an intermediary figure: she is more modern, she rides a quad bike, a snowmobile, she has a phone, and so on. Yet she was raised by the previous generation, which wants to keep everything silent. Then there is Áilin who, like all teenagers, can learn everything through their phones about what is appropriate or not. She embodies this global culture, this way young people live today with access to everything, and therefore she does not believe in the way her mother wants to handle things.

What about this entirely dreamlike sequence? Is joik a form of shamanism?
Joik has a dramatic and brutal history. This tradition was banned by Christians because they believed it was linked to shamanism. But joik is much more than that, and in many regions, like mine, the tradition is still very much alive. There are joiks for different mountains, different places and different people. Joik is connected to nature, to human beings and to the universe.

Do you feel a responsibility to showcase Sami culture and help it travel around the world through a film?
We have many stories to tell that are not very well known to the general public, and I think this is the right moment to tell them. With the climate crisis and everything currently affecting societies around the world, Indigenous peoples also have a voice to be heard in finding solutions. How can we avoid the destruction of the world? In Indigenous cultures, and particularly among the Sami, there are different methods and perhaps a different rhythm that can be valuable.