Je’vida

Lida is taciturn, gruff, and bears the marks of a hard life. She is waiting for her niece in front of a high-rise building. The two have never seen each other. They are meeting because Lida’s sister has died and left her daughter a house at the lake. For Lida, it is a painful trip back to her own childhood. When the niece finds a traditional dress packed away in the house and starts asking questions, the past comes back to life. Flashbacks show Lida as a young girl called Je’vida, who had a happy childhood growing up in a Skolt Sámi community. She was a skilled fisher and loved her people’s festivals. But Finnish assimilation policies ripped her from that world, forced her to attend a Christian boarding school, and gave her a new name. In nuanced black-and-white images, the film tells the story of a women re-discovering her identity, so violently taken from her in her youth.